Carolina Isle Read online

  “No police cars?” R.J. asked.

  “I had half an inch between the curtain and the wall so I couldn’t see much,” Ariel said. “Would you mind telling me the plan?”

  Sara spoke first. “If the police are involved in this and are watching, we figure they’ll stop us as soon as we leave the house with a big roll across our shoulders. But if it’s an individual who’s watching—”

  “Or two,” David said.

  “Yes, if a few people are watching, they’ll follow us and see us dispose of what I hope will look like a body,” R.J. said. “Sara and I are to go one way, you and Jock here the other way.”

  No one moved. They just stood there glaring at R.J.

  “Okay. David,” R.J. said. “Ariel, you and David will go a second way.”

  “We found some useful things,” Sara said to Ariel. “There’s a treasure trove of stuff under the eaves.” She nodded to the little doors in the bottom of the slanting attic walls.

  “Ready?” R.J. asked.

  “I think it would be better if I went with you instead of David,” Ariel said to R.J.

  When Sara looked at David, his face turned red. So that’s what this whole thing is about, she thought in disgust. Another woman who wanted R.J. “I think that’s a great idea,” Sara said, stepping closer to David.

  The men looked at each other in silent, mutual agreement, then they traded places so they were back to where they had been.

  “Sara and I know each other,” R.J. said in a way that meant there’d be no more discussion of the matter.

  “So do Ariel and I,” David said, sounding as though R.J. had been the one who’d asked Ariel to go with him.

  R.J. turned to Ariel. “When we go out, play it suspicious, as though you’re doing something bad.”

  “We are!” David said. “We should have—” Breaking off, he looked at them. “Called the police” was not an option.

  Ten minutes later, they were ready. Over David’s shoulder was one of Sara’s dummies wrapped in a small rug. He was bending his knees to look as though whatever was inside the rug was very heavy.

  Sara had dressed the other dummy in clothes she’d found in a box under the eaves. She’d put a broomstick inside the dummy to make it stay somewhat upright, and they’d put the Ariel wig askew on its head. She and R.J. were going to try to walk the dummy out, as though they were carrying a drunken person between them.

  As they started down the stairs, Ariel silently pointed out the roses marked with blue to show the squeaky steps. It looked as though other people had stayed in the rooms with the barred windows, and they too had heard people sneaking upstairs.

  At the front door, they paused and waited while R.J. went down the basement steps to deposit incriminating evidence on the body. He was back in a moment. He turned off the porch light, then cautiously opened the front door.

  “It’s showtime!” R.J. said.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I CAN’T GO ON WITH THIS,” R.J. SAID quietly to Sara. “I want you and the kids to stay in the house and do whatever it is you need to to survive, but I have to …” He waved his hand to indicate that he had some ideas that he was going to keep to himself.

  Sara was struggling with the limp dummy between them, trying to keep the floppy thing upright. If it weren’t so dark outside, and if R.J. weren’t leading them into an even darker forest, she’d never believe that anyone watching them would believe they were carrying a dead body. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “We need to—”

  “Get this body thrown over the cliff on the east side of the island. Yeah, I know that, but …”

  “So help me, if you start keeping secrets, I’ll drop this thing and start screaming.” She could feel R.J. laughing.

  “I think I liked it better when you didn’t speak to me. Was I really such a terrible boss?”

  “The worst. You rule and no one else is allowed to have any input.”

  “But it’s my company.”

  “Then run it all by yourself.”

  “You do hate me, don’t you?”

  “Could we talk about this later? Right now I’d like to keep us out of jail.”

  “Which brings us back to the beginning,” R.J. said. “I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. I’m beginning to think all this has to do with my work.”

  Sara hesitated, but she didn’t stop walking. The dummy’s feet were dragging and they had to shift its weight often. R.J. had put some rocks in the coat pockets and down the front so it weighed quite a bit, but it wasn’t enough. “What have you done at work that would make someone want to frame you for murder?” she asked.

  “Nothing specific, but I wonder if this has to do with …” He trailed off and she could feel him shrug.

  “For once in your life, I’d like to hear the truth out of you. What is really going on?” She could feel his smile and he took most of the weight of the dummy onto his own arms, giving Sara a break.

  “Kids!” R.J. said. “They talk you to death, don’t they? It’s a good thing both of them are rich or they’d starve to death.”

  She knew he’d changed the subject and hadn’t answered her question, but then that’s what he always did. “I assume you mean Ariel and David.”

  “Exactly,” R.J. said.

  “So what are you planning to do about them?”

  “I left them a note saying I wasn’t returning, that I’d see them in court on Monday—unless they could find a way to escape this place. I think that whoever planted this body on us, is after me, so I’m going to do my best to find out who did it.”

  “On your own?” Sara asked.

  “On my own. Just the way I run my company.”

  “I see,” Sara said.

  “Here,” R.J. said, turning into some trees.

  “You seem to know this place well. Have you been here before?”

  “Never, but I spent quite a bit of time reading about it on the Internet, remember?”

  Sara swung around with the dummy and they walked into the dark, dense forest. “Does this lead anywhere?” she whispered. She wanted to talk, wanted to get angry at R.J., for the reality of the situation might make her collapse. Someone had killed Fenny Nezbit and that person was still out there. If he—or she—thought that R.J. and Sara were carrying a dead body, why shouldn’t he/she shoot them too?

  Sara and R.J. walked in silence for a few minutes and Sara began to think about the truth of their situation. She could be accused of being an accessory to murder. Or would she be accused directly? Did they execute two people for one murder?

  “I want to drop this body off the east side of the island,” R.J. said softly. “There’s a cliff there. When I read about it I thought of hang gliding, not using it to discard a body, even a fake one.”

  Sara didn’t smile. She was thinking about what R.J. had said about going off on his own to find the truth. She didn’t want to admit it, but she too wanted to get away from Ariel and David. How could that be? she wondered. Her whole reason for being on the trip had been to be near David.

  “I’m going with you,” she whispered, then prepared herself for the fight she knew was to come. She’d have to argue with R.J. that she wasn’t a “kid” like David and Ariel, that she could be of some use to him. But R.J. didn’t say a word. When he didn’t try to argue her out of it, she knew that he had something in mind.

  “If all you want is a chance to try to seduce me—” She broke off at his suppressed laugh.

  “You never give up, do you, Johnson? What have I done to make you think I’m the lowest of the low?”

  “The women you seduce then abandon.”

  “What should I do? Marry them? Do you think I don’t know what they want from me? They want money, that’s all. If I didn’t have money, they wouldn’t give a short, ugly, old guy like me a second look. All those gorgeous young females would go out with gorgeous young males. Money is what gives old men like me a chance.” He stopped walking. “Let�€