We retired to the great room.

Yes , retired. That's how Junior Thurman phrased it. I'm fairly certain I'd never retired to any room, let alone a great room. But, if sitting in comfy chairs and holding my wine and trying to pretend to be normal was retiring, then there was a first for everything.

As we sat, I sent a thought over to Allison for her to shield her own thoughts.

She asked why and I told her to just do it, that I would explain later. She shrugged, and I sensed her mind closing to me, exactly the way I had taught her to do it.

Good girl, I thought, although she wouldn't be able to hear me.

The great room was, well, great. It had a soaring ceiling crisscrossed with thick beams. It had arches and a brick fireplace and oversized furniture. The room was something to behold. And, apparently, to retire in.

Outside, through the stacked windows framed with heavy curtains, the tall evergreens were now swaying violently, although I doubted the others could see them in the darkness. A storm was moving in. A big one, too.

"It's getting blustery out there," said Edwin, the young man who might have been handsome if not for the perpetual smile on his face. He could see the trees as well?

"Blustery?" said Allison next to me.

She'd had two glasses of wine. She was also smaller than me and hadn't eaten much at dinner. I suspected the wine had gone straight to her head.

Junior Thurman, who'd been texting on his too-big cell phone, set it aside and looked up at her. He was holding a glass of sherry. I was fairly certain I'd never before seen anyone drink a glass of sherry in my life.

Another first, I thought.

"It's a word we like to use up here,"

he said jovially enough. He had a strong, resonant voice that seemed to fill the great room. His wife nodded. She had quit looking at me. Now she was staring down into her own glass of wine, legs tucked under her.

Junior went on: "Blustery is just our way saying that we're getting some nasty weather out there, nasty even for the Northwest."

"We just call it a shit-storm where I'm from," said Allison, and immediately looked like she regretted it.

The kids who'd been playing cards nearby looked up. Junior frowned a little.

Edwin, I saw, grinned even bigger.

"And where are you from, Allison?"

Junior asked pleasantly.

"Texas."

"Ah," said Junior without elaborating, as if that answered everything. He turned his attention back to me. "Samantha, from where do you know my dear niece?"

"I've known Tari since we were in college," I said, reciting the script. Tara was "Tari" to friends and family.

Junior nodded. He held the glass of sherry loosely in his hands. The rich vermillion color caught some of the ambient light. From here, the liquid looked like blood. My stomach growled.

My sick, ghoulish stomach.

He said, "Did you two have many classes together?"

"One or two," I said, "until I dropped out."

"And why would you do a thing like that?" asked Patricia, Junior's wife.

"I got pregnant," I lied.

"Twins," said Allison, jumping in.

Junior nodded, as if that made perfect sense. I nearly frowned at Allison. We hadn't discussed me having twins. She'd drunkenly embellished the story. Tara was looking concerned, too.

"Twins," said Mrs. Thurman. "How delightful. What are their names?"

"Tammy and Anthony."

"They're not, you know, identical,"

said Allison, slurring her words slightly.

Mrs. Thurman regarded Allison curiously. "I gathered that." She turned back to me. "And you've kept in touch with our Tari all this time?"

"On and off," I said, lying easily. It was, after all, what investigators did. We often lied to get our information.

"We reconnected through Facebook,"

blurted Allison.

"Oh, so you're friends on Facebook?"

asked Edwin. He continued smiling. He seemed to be getting a kick out of all of this.

I saw where this was going, and saw where Allison had screwed up. I said, "I don't think so, not yet. We just emailed."

Edwin leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees and looked directly at me. His face was angular, his cheekbones high. His lips were a little too full, even for me. He said, "Maybe we can be friends on Facebook."

"Maybe," I said. "Depends how friendly you are."

He laughed and sat back.

"I just love Facebook," said Allison.

"Just last week a friend of mine sent me this cat video...I swear to God that little booger was clapping. Clapping! A kitten! Can you believe it?"

Apparently, no one could. Or they were too dumbfounded to speak. Junior shifted his considerable gaze from me to her. The president of Thurman Hotels was also, apparently, the leader of the family, too. "And how do you know our Tari?"

"Oh, I'm just here for the ride," said Allison, sitting back and kicking her Uggs comfortably. She snapped her gum. "I'm with Sammie here. Where she goes, I go."

"Cute," said Patricia.

Time to change the subject. "This is a beautiful home," I said.

The older couple sitting near the roaring fireplace sat forward. Elaine Thurman, sister of the deceased. She smiled brightly. Her aura, I saw, was bluish and yellow, which told me she was a woman very much at peace with herself.

Her aura also had a black thread woven through it. Grieving, obviously. This was, after all, the one-year anniversary of her brother's drowning. She said, "The home has been in my family for generations.

We've all been coming out to Skull Island for over seventy-five years."

"Why is it called Skull Island?" asked Allison.

Edwin leaned forward again. "There's a Native American burial ground on the other side of the island. It's supposedly cursed."

"Skull Island and curses," said Allison, elbowing him. "Where's Scooby- Doo and Shaggy, too?"

Which had been, of course, my exact thought.

"Well, the curses are just legends,"

said Calvin Thurman, or Cal, one of the uncles. He was, I suspected, dying of a cancer. I knew this because of the dark spot of his kidney, a dark spot that was, literally, like a black hole, sucking in the color of his surrounding aura. Indeed, he leaned away from it, taking pressure off it.

He doesn't even know, I thought.

He held my gaze closely, and something seemed to pass between us. His eyes, I was certain, were trying to communicate something to me. He said, "Although there have been a few cases of unfortunate deaths."

"We don't talk about those," snapped Junior. "Not to strangers."

"Nonsense," said Cal, apparently not intimidated at all by his wife's nephew, president of the company or not. He looked again at me. "It's in all the papers.

Anyone can find that."

He continued looking at me. I looked at him. His eyes, I was certain, were pleading with me.

"Tell me about the deaths," I said uncomfortably. I had, of course, come across three such deaths in my own research of Skull Island. Were there some that I had missed?

But Junior's glowering stare finally cowered old Cal. He sighed deeply and winked at me. "Catch me later after I've had a few of these" - and he held up his Scotch - "and I'll tell you all."

He laughed. I laughed. No one else laughed.

Instead, Junior Thurman announced that tomorrow we would hold a memorial for his late father, George Thurman, whose death I had, unknown to the family, been hired to investigate. Junior went on: His late father had passed at this time last year, and he wanted to have a ceremony at the chapel located in the mausoleum.

Next, the conversation quickly turned to business. Tara turned and talked to me about my kids. All the while, I was aware of glances from various family members.

Of course, some weren't glancing. Some were openly staring. Like Edwin Thurman. Edwin with his perpetual grin.

Patricia, not so much.

Outside, the trees continued to sway and bend and appeared ready to snap, all while a sheet of rain swept over the grounds.

Welcome to Skull Island.