Carolina Isle Read online

  In the next second, they heard a loud thump from inside the bathroom. It sounded as though Ariel had fallen.

  “Ariel?” Sara said through the door. “Are you all right?” There was no answer. “Ariel?” Still no answer. She tried the doorknob. Locked. She rattled the door handle.

  R.J. stepped forward. “I don’t think we should wake our landlady.” He turned the doorknob hard, but it didn’t open. He looked at her. “Sometimes in these old houses, the same key works on all the locks.”

  He didn’t have to say more. Seconds later, Sara was back with a key taken from one of the bedroom doors and he inserted it into the lock. It wouldn’t go in. Squatting, he looked through the keyhole. “The key’s in the lock on the inside. I need to get it out.”

  “Let me try,” David said. He had taken a wire coat hanger out of a closet and twisted it open. Kneeling beside R.J., he worked the wire into the lock, and seconds later they heard the key hit the tile floor inside the bathroom. To their ears it sounded very loud and all three of them held their breath. Would Ms. Vancurren hear?

  When they heard nothing from downstairs, R.J. looked through the keyhole. Whatever he saw made his shoulders tighten and the back of his neck redden.

  “What is it?” Sara whispered.

  R.J. stood up while David put the bedroom key in the bathroom door lock. “Let’s get it open as fast as we can,” R.J. said and Sara knew that something was wrong with Ariel. A sense of panic came over her. If something was wrong, who could they call for help? The King’s Isle police?

  The key worked and David opened the bathroom door. Lying on the floor, clothed only in her underwear, was Ariel. She was curled into a ball, her back to them, facing the tub. David reached her first and pulled her into his arms. “Ariel, baby,” he whispered.

  Sara’s back was to the tub and the curtain was drawn across it. When she looked up at R.J. she saw that all the color had left his face. He was looking down into the tub, his eyes wide, his skin bloodless.

  As Sara turned her head, R.J. said, “No!” but it was too late. Lying in the tub, half-hidden behind the curtain, was John Fenwick Nezbit. His eyes were open and he was as ugly as when they’d seen him in the bar, but he had a hole in his forehead. He was dead.

  Sara was standing there, looking at that odious man and thinking what seemed to be rational thoughts, when R.J. grabbed her under the arms and pulled her upward. Without knowing it, she’d been sinking down toward the floor. Three more seconds and she would have been lying beside Ariel in a faint.

  David looked up when R.J. moved so swiftly, and R.J. nodded toward the end of the tub. Whatever David felt, he stayed calm. He looked at the dead man, then turned his attention back to Ariel, who was just coming to.

  “I’m fine,” Sara said, but when she tried to take a step, her knees gave way. R.J. swept her into his arms, carried her into the sitting room, and put her on one of the couches. There was no liquor in the rooms, but he got her a glass of water. Behind him came David, carrying Ariel. He set her on the couch across from Sara.

  “Stay,” R.J. said to both of the women, but they didn’t need the order. He and David went back into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Ariel looked at Sara and she looked back, but they said nothing. Sara reached across the coffee table and handed Ariel the glass of water. She sipped, then put the glass down on the table.

  They sat in silence, listening, but there were no sounds. If the men were talking, they were doing it so quietly that they couldn’t be heard.

  After what seemed like an eternity, David and R.J. came back into the room and took the chairs at the ends of the couches. Both of them looked older than they had an hour ago.

  “He’s dead,” R.J. said. “Shot through the head.”

  “It couldn’t have been us,” Sara said. “The whole town saw us at dinner.”

  “And they saw him,” R.J. said. “He was in the bar when we left so that means he was killed while we were walking back. Alone. Just the four of us. No outside witnesses.”

  “He was killed then carried up the stairs of that woman’s house,” Ariel said, sitting up. “She knows he’s here and she’s downstairs waiting for our screams.”

  They looked at her, blinking at the venom in her voice.

  “There aren’t going to be any screams,” R.J. said calmly. “There will be no screams and no hysterics. We’re going to treat this like it was a business deal.” He looked at them as though they might protest, but Sara knew that if there was one thing R.J. was good at, it was business.

  “How do we do that?” Ariel asked softly.

  “For one thing, we don’t let the enemy know what’s in our heads. And we don’t do what they expect us to. Right now it’s my guess that there are people hiding in the bushes outside, waiting for us to do something dramatic.”

  “Such as?” David asked. He was trying to sound cool and calm, but Sara could tell that he was as scared as the rest of them. Except R.J., that is. He didn’t seem afraid at all. He seemed angry.

  Chapter Ten

  “DON’T FADE OUT ON ME NOW, JOHNson,” R.J. said softly.

  He and Sara were in the bathroom, looking down at the body of John Fenwick Nezbit. They weren’t touching him, just looking, as though they couldn’t really believe what they were seeing.

  “I’m—” Sara began.

  “Scared out of your mind?”

  She nodded.

  “I am too.”

  “You?”

  “That surprises you?” R.J. asked.

  “Shocks me,” she said. “You go into deals that terrify other people, but you’re always calm.”

  He shrugged. “Money. What does it matter? You win, good; you lose, okay. But this …” He nodded toward Nezbit’s body. “This was planted here with the intention of our taking the rap, and the rap leads to prison, even to execution.”

  She was getting more scared now. “We couldn’t just tell someone, could we?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Not an option,” she surmised.

  He sat down on the closed toilet and motioned for her to close the door. “Look,” he said softly, “I figure that it’s you and me in this. Those two …”

  Ariel and David were in the sitting room, close to each other on the sofa, neither of them saying anything. R.J. had called Sara into the bathroom with him—and “Fenny.”

  “She’s in on it,” Sara said, motioning toward the door and meaning Phyllis Vancurren. “I know you and David think she’s beautiful, but I wish you could see her clearly.”

  “Give me a break. You’ve seen the women I date. Do you think I’d fall for some overused hag like Phyllis Vancurren? I knew she was up to something the minute I saw her.”

  “Ariel says there are some very expensive things in this house.”

  “More than you know. Your cousin isn’t the only one who can snoop. I opened a few cabinets. Looks like she knew we were coming far enough in advance that she hid some items of jade, porcelain, and the odd Ming vase.”

  “They’re making a fortune here, aren’t they?”

  “Someone is, and I agree that Vancurren is in on it, although I can’t figure out how much. One thing for sure is that they were waiting for us. They knew we were coming.”

  Sara’s head came up. “The ferry.”

  “Right,” R.J. said, smiling. “I didn’t tell anyone, but I looked for a schedule, but there wasn’t one. When we got to the water on the other side, there was no ferry in sight, but after we had lunch—”

  “And we’d told the waitress we were going to King’s Isle for the day—”

  “The ferry magically appeared.”

  “For your Jaguar. With that car, you might as well have put a sign on your head: I am rich.” Sara sat down on the end of the tub. The curtain hid the body from her. “And we were told that the ferry wouldn’t return until after the trial. Which could now be for murder,” she added.

  “I don’t think that was part of it. The we