Our Island Inn (Quirky Tales from the Caribbean) (19 page)

“Oh, hello
. You’re here early.” He rubbed his eyes as she set the mug beside him. “Man, I could use some coffee.”

With the deft hands of an experienced server,
Elsie poured a generous amount of brown liquid into the cup and then added his usual portions of cream and sugar.

Glenn wrapped his fingers around the mug
and brought it to his lips. Instead of the steadiness he’d anticipated from the first shot of caffeine, he felt slightly tipsy.

Shaking his head
in confusion, he took another long sip and stared up at Elsie. She wore her deputy’s uniform, not the maid outfit for her cleaning job.

“Watching. You’re always watching.” His voice wobbled
as the drug seeped through his system. “You know what I’ve done…what Oliver’s done…don’t you?”

Elsie
wasn’t sure what he meant with respect to Oliver, but she nodded anyway. She’d seen enough of Glenn’s illicit activities to be convinced of whatever guilt he had assumed. Tipping the carafe, she topped off his mug and eased herself into the nearest chair.

“Inspector Pickering is going
to make an arrest this morning, Mr. Glenn. He’s coming for you.”

Glenn nearly choked on a gulp of coffee. He plunked down the mug, sloshing
liquid onto the table.

“
What? No. You don’t understand.” His head swayed back and forth. “It’s not me. It’s Oliver. He’s the one they should be looking for.”

“
I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid the inspector’s made up his mind.” Elsie shifted her weight in the chair as if she was about to get up and leave. “I just thought you should know.”

Glenn grabbed her arm
, desperately pleading. “Elsie, you have to help me.”

She removed his hand. “You’ll have to speak with the inspector.”

“He won’t believe me. Elsie, I don’t want to go to jail – especially not down here.”

She hesitated, a conflicted expression on her face. Then she relented.

“You have to leave right now. That’s your only chance. Take the trail down to the beach. Continue on past where we found the body. It will eventually put you out onto the main road.”

Glenn
reached for the mug, almost knocking it over. She held it for him, steadying his grip as he finished the last bit of liquid. Then he turned to look at the railing. She could tell he was having second thoughts about fleeing through the jungle. Cowardice was another of his inherent personality traits.

Elsie
glanced over her shoulder, pretending she’d heard a sound. “That’s Pickering’s truck coming up the drive. You’d better hurry.”

“Right then.
Thank you, Elsie.” His hands trembling, Glenn rose from his seat and slowly walked to the pavilion’s exterior stairs.

~
~ ~

ELSIE WATCHED
THE innkeeper descend, holding her breath as his footsteps marched toward the clearing below.

“She’s ready for you, Glenn,” she whispered. “
The spirit is waiting for you on the path at the edge of the clearing.”

A HALF-HOUR
LATER, Oliver unlocked the door to the reception building and sleepily stepped inside.

Saturday morning was typically a
bustling time, but a pall hung over Our Island Inn – both from the overcast sky and the aftermath of the previous evening’s grim discovery.

T
here’d been no overnight guests.

A
t Mary’s insistence, the Golden Girls had moved to the resort on the island’s west end. She’d deemed it a safer location to wait for news. They were losing faith that their missing Millicent would be found alive.

They weren’
t the only guests to back out of their reservations at the inn.

Oliver
groaned as he played the phone messages that had accumulated overnight. The calls were all either dinner or room cancellations.

Information
spread quickly on an island, rumors even faster. Reports of a corpse being carried across the deck and through the restaurant seating area had rapidly circulated – along with a resurgence of stories about the previous innkeepers and the curse of Parrot Ridge.

No one wanted to be the next victim.

~ ~ ~

OLIVER RUBBED HIS temples, trying to staunch the migrain
e building in his head.

The morning was bound to get worse, not better.

So far, Glenn was missing in action. He’d last been seen the night before lounging on the pool deck. When he didn’t return to the apartment, Oliver figured he had fallen asleep outside.

It wasn’
t the first time, Oliver reflected with a sigh.

Glenn
was likely holed up somewhere, hiding from the reality of their dire circumstances. Ability to cope with challenging situations had never been his strong suit.

Oliver
was trying not to blame Glenn for the current crisis, but he couldn’t help but think that everything had started to go downhill with the arrival of that wretched Romeo character.

Of course,
if he was honest with himself, life at the inn had been deteriorating for months.

There was no time
to worry about that now. He had to find a way out of their current predicament. It was a rough patch, nothing more. If he could just muddle through, things would be fine.

Everything between him
and Glenn would be fine.

He glanced out the reception window toward the pavilion.
There was yet another problem to add to his list. Maya had apparently packed up and left during the night. The suite she and Jesús shared had been emptied of their belongings.

He sighed with exhaustion.
What else could go wrong?

As if answering his question, the
reception’s phone began to ring.

Hands on his hips, Oliver glared at the receiver.

~ ~ ~

“Welcome to Our Island Inn.”

The voice on the other end of the line was vaguely familiar, but Oliver couldn’t place it. He blinked, listening as an American woman asked if she could book a room for that evening. She obviously hadn’t heard about their recent difficulties.

“I’m flying down
from the States today. Actually, I’m already halfway there – I’m calling you from the Miami airport. Sorry for the short notice, but I’m hoping you can squeeze me in tonight.”

Oliver cleared his throat.
“I don’t think there will be any problem finding you a room. If you can give me your name and a credit card number, I’ll make your reservation.”

The
re was a pause. “This is Olivia Hamilton. I stayed at the inn a few months back…with my husband.”

“Oh, yes. Olivia.”

Oliver nearly dropped the phone.

“
Yes, of course, I remember.”

INSPECTOR PICKERING
PUSHED open the reception door, clamping down on the bells after their first timid jingle.

He was
accompanied by the morning’s search team. Most of the crew from the night before had returned to help, including Elsie who had joined the group in the parking lot. The reverend was one of the few absentees. He was reportedly attending to the needs of a parishioner.

Oliver looked up at Pickering
. The innkeeper’s hand rested on the telephone’s receiver, which he had just placed in its cradle.

“
Hello, Captain,” he said hoarsely.

Pickering didn’t bother
to correct him. He pulled out his notepad and began ticking off his list of suspects. “I’m going to send the search team out for another sweep of the jungle. In the meantime, I’ll need to interview you, your partner, the cleaning staff, the chef…”

“
That will be difficult,” Oliver cut in apologetically.

Pickering
looked up from his notes. “Why do you say that?”

“Maya’s gone, and I’ve lost track of Glenn.”

The inspector’s brow furrowed. “Maya – the chef?”

Pickering
flipped the notepad shut. He could no longer avoid the issue. “Did she have a canning operation in your kitchen?”

He
winced at Oliver’s puzzled answer.

“Why yes, of course.”

~ ~ ~

A ROOSTER CROWED up from the ravine
as Oliver led the way into the pavilion.

Pickering motioned for
the search team to wait by the bar outside the kitchen’s swinging doors – everyone except for Oliver and the junior deputy.

He
nodded to Elsie. “You know this place. Is anything missing or out of place?”

Elsie
stepped into the center aisle between the counters and surveyed the scene. Maya’s departure had left only a few recognizable holes. Her personal set of kitchen knives were gone, along with the ceramic bird that had rested at the edge of her workstation.

“
Just her personal items.” Elsie shook her head. “Nothing of importance, really.”

With his habitual grunt, Pickering
nodded to the pantry at the kitchen’s opposite end.

“What about in there?”

Oliver’s thin voice wasn’t more than a whisper.

“That’s where Maya stored her canning supplies.”

~ ~ ~

IN MARKED CONTRAST to the kitchen
’s airy space, the pantry was dark, closed in, and – the inspector couldn’t help but notice – secluded.

Pickering reached
over his head to pull the string attached to the light bulb mounted to the ceiling. The light turned on, but it did little to improve visibility. It cast only a minimal glow across the wall of sealed glass jars.

The inspector
slid a small flashlight from his belt, flicked the switch, and aimed the beam at the shelving unit.

“What are you looking for?” Oliver asked with concern.

“You don’t want to know.”

Pickering
ran his penlight along the side of the glass jars, trying to see through to the contents. The paper label wrapped around each container made it impossible to tell what had been sealed inside. There was no writing on the labels; the wrapper color apparently provided the only clue to the material that had been preserved.

Pickering thought ruefully of his
mentor’s glass jar experience fifteen years earlier. Then he handed his flashlight to Elsie, removed the nearest jar from the shelf, and unscrewed the lid.

There was a
tiny pop as the interior pressure released. The inspector curled his fingers around the rim of the lid and lifted it up.

Eyes wide, Elsie aimed the flashlight at the opening.

The contents were a blended mush of orange and red.

Bracing himself,
Pickering leaned toward the jar and sniffed.

His brow furrowed.

Gingerly, he dipped a hand into the jellied substance and pulled it out. He touched his coated fingertip to his tongue – and sighed with relief.

“Strawberry peach.”

Oliver frowned.

“What did you think it might be?”

PICKERING WIPED HIS finger on a paper towel that Elsie had fetched from the kitchen. He drew in his breath, trying to formulate an appropriate response to Oliver’s question.

“I suspected the jars might
contain…”

Before he could finish,
Elsie called for his attention.

“Inspector.
”

S
he aimed the flashlight at the lower portion of the shelf, pointing its beam at a row of jars wrapped in green labels. While still obscured by the paper wrapping, the contents of these containers appeared to be thicker, chunkier – and far less appetizing.

Elsie
picked one up and handed it to Pickering.

The subsequent
grunt was not the inspector’s ordinary fallback expression.

As Pickering
stared at a glass jar he had no intention of opening, Oliver crouched in front of the shelving unit and peered through the opening created by the container’s removal.

He’d caught a glimpse of something hidden at the back of the row.

Threading his hand through the gap, Oliver reached past the jars and pulled out a brown leather binder.

As he brought
Glenn’s journal up toward the light, two objects fell out of the front sleeve and clattered onto the floor.

Elsie gasped at the
sight of the gold chain and red earring. She’d planted them in the apartment, inside Glenn’s drawer in the jewelry box, for the inspector to find once he focused his missing persons inquiry on the innkeepers.