Our Island Inn (Quirky Tales from the Caribbean) (18 page)

Several c
lean knife wounds had pierced the man’s chest, the work of a skilled artisan. The corpse had been displayed to attract maximum animal attention. The birds weren’t the only scavengers on the island. Critters from the jungle would have moved in to pick the bones clean in a matter of days. Without intervention, the remains would have rapidly decayed in the tropical heat.

Someone had hoped
that the petty crook’s body might never be found.

Pickering rubbed his chin.

It seemed Romeo’s thieving had at last caught up to him. He’d stolen from someone who’d decided to take revenge.

If so, that meant his latest victims, the innkeepers, were the main murder suspects.

Clarice finished her meal and moved to the floor beside her master’s chair, resting her chin on his knee. The inspector shifted his hand to her head, gently kneading it as he pondered.

If he had to place a bet, he’d put his
money on Glenn. That guy had a perpetually guilty look about him. Of course, he could just as readily place the blame on Oliver, for the exact opposite reason.

Perhaps both men were involved in the crime.

With a grunt, Pickering pushed his chair back from the table.

None of t
hese theories addressed the other missing persons now associated with the inn.

Romeo’
s murder had opened up a slew of questions, chief among them: what had happened to Millicent and the others?

Pickering
shoved the files into the packet and turned off the light over the table.

He was going to have to mak
e another visit to Parrot Ridge and – he shuddered at the thought – inspect the kitchen pantry.

OVER A THOUSAND
miles north of Parrot Ridge, a woman with pink-painted toenails relaxed in a lounge chair on a covered patio in a glitzy Dallas suburb. She listened as a hummingbird buzzed a decorative feeder hanging from a nearby tree. In the adjacent lawn, crickets chirped their nighttime symphony.

Sipping on a glass of wine,
Olivia Hamilton thought of how much she had enjoyed her quiet evening – and all the quiet evenings that had preceded it.

There
had been several months now of blissful silence, uninterrupted by football games blaring from the television set, loud guffaws, or boastful comments about male virility enhancements.

Not for one second h
ad she missed her second husband and his little blue pills.

~
~ ~

INSIDE THE BRICK mansion,
a picture of Olivia’s missing and presumed dead spouse occupied a spot on the wall over the fireplace mantle. Fixed in a flat two-dimensional image and encased in a wooden frame, he didn’t seem quite so unbearable.

This was the only vestige
of Mr. Hamilton that remained in his previous home, which is more than could be said for Olivia’s first deceased husband.

Upon her solo return from the Caribbean,
Olivia had donated Mr. Hamilton’s clothing to Goodwill and sold his golf clubs and other sporting paraphernalia in the classifieds. His shiny black Buick had been traded in for a silver SUV.

The
stash of blue pills, she’d flushed down the toilet.

~
~ ~

AS OLIVIA NEARED the bottom of her
wine glass, her thoughts shifted to her son, who was attending medical school nearby. She hoped he would pay her a visit after he finished his latest round of exams.

Her only child had always been a
sickly, detached sort. He’d spent much of his life immersed in sci-fi novels and chemistry set projects. The boy had suffered far too much during his fragile youth, despite her efforts to protect him.

After his
biological father died in the stabbing at Parrot Ridge, Olivia relocated with her son to Dallas. It was a tough transition, and they went through some lean times while she tried to rebuild her life. Finding herself deeper and deeper in debt, she mined the only resource at her disposal.

She married a rich man.

The second husband was a compromise she soon regretted. Neither she nor her son ever held any fondness for the boorish lout.

The boy
hadn’t been the least bit bothered when she told him that his stepfather had fallen overboard their rented yacht during their anniversary vacation to the Caribbean.

Like her, he’d
been greatly relieved.

~
~ ~

OF COURSE, THE husband
was only the first of Olivia’s house-cleaning initiatives. The second had taken place a few weeks later, when she presented her son and his gold-digger girlfriend with a weekend getaway to the Caribbean.

He’d been reluctant to go, but she
’d coaxed him into it.

“I’m worried about all the stress y
ou’re under at medical school. You should take some time to relax. And besides, I’ve picked out the perfect little B&B. It’s very romantic. Daisy will love it.”

Daisy Jones, Olivia thought with disgust. She’d
hated the busty dyed-blond coed the second she’d laid eyes on her. She’d recognized the girl’s greedy motives and insincere proclamations of love. She would have none of that for her boy.

It had ta
ken extreme measures to finally extricate her son from Daisy’s conniving clutches, but the planning and preparation had been worth the effort.

A
carefully timed phone call had smoothed things over the morning after the girl’s disappearance. The boy had been upset until Olivia put things into the proper perspective. After all, a mother knows how to talk to her son.

He was better off without
Daisy Jones.

Olivia drained her glass.

They were both better off, she concluded with a smile.

~
~ ~

READY TO RETIRE for the evening
, Olivia got up from her lounge chair and walked inside the house. She paused at the fireplace, not to look up at her husband’s picture, but to admire the decorative ceramic birds spread across the mantle.

She was
an avid collector of the painted trinkets, purchasing them wherever she traveled. Most of the items she’d acquired from cruise ship shops in the Caribbean. Each one represented a specific memory of a beautiful location or a cherished moment.

She rarely parte
d with any of her prized birds, only occasionally bestowing them as gifts.

She still
missed the matching set of little green parrots she’d bought fifteen years ago when she lived in the Caribbean. One of the pair had been smashed against her first husband’s head. The other she’d given to the woman who’d served as the chef in the inn’s restaurant.

She’d never been able to find a replacement set.

Life was full of sacrifices, she thought with a sigh.

~
~ ~

A
TELEPHONE RANG through the cavernous house, breaking the deep silence. Olivia strode into the kitchen and set her empty glass on the counter, wondering who could be calling at such a late hour.

She picked up the receiver
– and frowned at the display of the incoming phone number.

The call was from the
Caribbean.

From the island
territory that included Parrot Ridge.

CLOUDS C
ROSSED THE moon over Our Island Inn, casting gloomy shadows on the pool deck.

I collapsed on
to a chair at a table by the pool. It was late, long past midnight, but tired as I was, there was little chance of sleep.

I had no intention of stepping foot inside the apartment
– or, for that matter, spending another day on Parrot Ridge. I planned to head out at dawn and catch the first ferry off the island. I had no idea where I would go from there.

All that mattered was running away, as quickly as possible.

Oliver had gone to bed hours earlier, soon after the police departed with Romeo’s body. With a shudder, I recalled his calm expression as the remains were carried through the pavilion and up the stairs to the parking lot.

His
was the face of a killer.

It was a difficult
realization to accept, particularly since I couldn’t place all of the blame on the nebulous spirit that haunted the ravine.

Whatever murderous tendencies
my partner now possessed had been safely suppressed until he was confronted by my acts of infidelity. That the consequences were unintended did nothing to assuage my guilt.

Sorrowfully, I looked down
at the jungle seething below the deck. Somewhere out there, more bodies waited to be discovered.

I
thought of the first two guests who’d gone missing: the brute with his little blue pills and the over-amorous Daisy Jones.

They were horrid people, but they didn’t deserve to die.

And then there was the most painful disappearance, that of Jesús. The image of his desecrated corpse lying somewhere in the woods was more than I could bear.

Why, Oliver?

I knew the answer.

The deaths were a means of alleviating pain – for others,
out of his natural sense of compassion, and then for himself. But the solution was far too crude for civilized man. It inevitably led to mayhem, which is what I presumed had happened to Millicent.

There was only one way for me to stop this madness. I had to leave.

I wasn’t brave enough for a face-to-face goodbye. There was no telling what kind of violent outburst that might provoke. I planned to be gone before Oliver awoke.

T
en years together deserved some kind of closure, however, so I began to write, not in my journal but in a formal letter with a pen and paper I’d fetched from the bar inside the pavilion.

“Dear
Oliver…”

~
~ ~

I WROTE FOR nearly an hour, carefully
choosing my words. The frogs took up their nightly chorus, providing welcome encouragement. When I finished, I folded the sheets into a neat packet and wrote Oliver’s name on the outside.

Now,
how to deliver it?

With all the commotion earlier that evening, the centerpieces had been left out on the tables. I slid the packet beneath a heavy candle
where I knew Oli would be sure to find it when he cleaned up the next morning.

The task completed,
I felt a sense of relief. Leaning back in my chair, I propped my feet on an adjacent seat. A short nap was all I needed, just enough to recharge my batteries.

The chickens could be counted on to wake me at daybreak.
Then I’d begin my escape.

I was half-asleep
when Elsie approached my table.

ELSIE
ARRIVED AT the inn a half-hour before daybreak. She expected Pickering would begin his follow up investigation that morning, and she wanted to complete her own inspection of the premises before he got there.

She smiled when she saw Glenn passed out on the chair by the pool.
The dozing innkeeper was exactly the type of loose end she had hoped to clean up.

Stopping
by the kitchen, she quickly brewed a pot of fresh coffee. As soon as the dark liquid began to perk, she transferred it to a carafe, which she placed on a tray along with the rest of the restaurant’s regular coffee service: a tiny metal pitcher filled with creamer, a couple of paper sugar packets, and a heavy ceramic mug.

Carrying the tray, she
headed out through the swinging doors to the pool deck. In the dim moonlight, the half-ounce of clear liquid in the bottom of the mug was almost impossible to detect. Glenn’s bloodshot eyes were unlikely to notice the anomaly.

She and Maya had
been drugging him for months, ever since he started his affair with Jesús. The effects of the hallucinogenic substance had proved tricky to gauge, but they’d gradually upped the dose until they reached the optimum concentration.

During the course of
this informal science project, Elsie had noticed that the drug didn’t necessarily change the subject’s persona. The formulation merely enhanced his natural tendencies and rendered him more susceptible to particular suggestions. Gradually, she and Maya had begun to tease out certain character traits that were already embedded in his personality – chief among them, his extreme paranoia.

Now, she sensed,
the innkeeper was ready to take a leap.

But just to be sure,
the liquid in the bottom of the mug was double the concentration they’d previously administered.

~
~ ~

GLENN JUMPED WHEN
he saw Elsie standing next to his table holding the coffee service tray.