Carolina Isle Read online

  “What does he do just before he leaves?”

  “Goes to the middle of the island and disappears for about six hours.”

  “And of course you followed him,” R.J. said.

  “When ol’ Fenny left town it looked like the Pied Piper the way people followed him, but he always managed to give them the slip. I can attest to the fact that he vanished into thin air. Poof! He was gone.”

  “But you’ve looked over that area when he wasn’t there, haven’t you?”

  “Many, many times,” Gideon said seriously. “I used to fantasize about finding the money and running away with it. But then, I think that’s the dream of every man, woman, and child on this island. ‘Fenny’s gold,’ we call it.”

  “The man was an alcoholic,” Sara said. “So was my father, and he couldn’t keep a secret.” Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. No matter how drunk her father got or how often, he’d never told her the truth about the night her mother died.

  “You name it and it’s been tried,” Gideon said, “but no one could pry a word from Fenny. His wife used to tell him that if he died, the money would be lost. Fenny said, ‘Then you’ll miss me, won’t you?’ He didn’t tell anyone anything. He enjoyed the people following him, and he liked to lead them on wild-goose chases. He grew up on this island and knew every inch of it well. His father drank and Fenny used to stay in the hills for weeks at a time. He knew all about living off the land.”

  “Like you do,” R.J. said, looking around the cabin.

  “Like I’ve had to learn,” Gideon said, his eyes defensive. “As soon as I was taller than Nezbit, I moved out of that house and into here. I think that whoever built that house lived in this cabin while it was being built—and I think I’m connected to him.”

  “Couldn’t you check the deeds to find out who built it?” Sara asked.

  “For all that Nezbit looks stupid, he isn’t,” Gideon said. “His name is on the deed as the original owner. There’s no record that I can find of who built the house. The old-timers say, ‘Some man from the mainland.’ He stayed to himself and met no one here.”

  “Smart man,” R.J. said.

  “Where were the hot springs?” Sara asked.

  “You can’t go up there,” Gideon said quickly. “The ground is loose and there are cave-ins.”

  “From the explosion?” R.J. asked.

  “From the dynamite,” Gideon answered. “The hot springs that made this town rich weren’t real. Way up on top is a natural stone reservoir. Back in the 1890s some men put big iron cauldrons in the middle of it and heated the water, then piped it down the hillside into little tubs that were also heated. For some unknown reason, somebody dynamited the reservoir and put a hole in it. That was the end of the phony hot springs.”

  “Maybe we could package this island as the most notorious—” R.J. began.

  “Most wicked,” Sara said.

  “Yes, most wicked island in the U.S. ‘Come see where the Victorians duped the unsuspecting rich.’”

  “And where the islanders made the boats wreck on the rocks so they could steal their riches,” said Sara.

  “And babies,” Gideon said.

  Sobering, R.J. and Sara looked at him.

  “I had to have come from somewhere and those twins don’t belong to anybody on this island,” Gideon said.

  R.J. and Sara looked at each other, then got up from the table. “You ready?” he asked.

  She knew what he was talking about without his having to say it, and she was glad that they weren’t going to have an argument about her going. “I need some hiking boots.”

  “You can’t go up there,” Gideon said. “It really is dangerous, and besides, the whole place has been combed by every resident on this island. You’ll never find Fenny’s gold—if it exists. He hadn’t been off the island in six months. Maybe he took all there was.”

  “Can you get her some shoes?” R.J. asked Gideon.

  The young man shook his head in disbelief, then smiled. “Been nice knowing the both of you,” he said. “For a minute there, I had some hope of getting off this island.”

  “If I do, you will,” R.J. said. “And that’s a promise.”

  “With the twins,” Sara said. “We’ll even try to find out who their parents are.”

  For a moment, the emotion in Gideon’s eyes was almost more than Sara could bear.

  “What size shoe do you wear?” he asked.

  “Six,” Sara said.

  “Same as Effie,” Gideon said. “This will be easy. You need anything else?”

  “A backpack, water bottles, socks of course, a good moisturizer, flashlights, and—”

  “And a cellphone,” R.J. said. “Get us what you can. I just want to see where the hot springs were.”

  “And a toothbrush and paste,” Sara said. “Shampoo and a portable shower, or maybe a big claw-foot bathtub would be nice. And a—”

  “A map,” Gideon said. “Wait here while I tell the kids what to get, then I’ll go start a fight with Effie while the kids raid the house. We’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “TELL ME AGAIN WHY WE’RE DOING this?” Sara asked as soon as Gideon left the cabin.

  “I don’t believe what I’m being told.” He was looking out the window. “You think that kid has gone to the police?”

  “No. Why don’t you ever believe anybody?”

  “I believed what I saw when I first met you,” R.J. said defensively. “It’s just that I don’t think we were told the whole truth about why we were put in jail. I think it was the story that was put out, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  Sara was still trying to figure out what R.J. meant about first seeing her. She was told that he’d been on the elevator, the doors were about to close, and R.J. had said, “That one. I want her.” People said that he was trying to make a point, that you could choose some nobody clerk and elevate her to the glorious job of waiting on R. J. Brompton hand and foot, 24/7. But now R.J. was implying that there was more to it. “No, it doesn’t make sense,” she said.

  “Right. Jail and dead bodies in the bathtub aren’t going to make a person want to stay someplace.”

  Sara had to work to come out of her reverie. “They want to make sure we don’t want to buy any property, don’t they?”

  “That’s what I think. I think there’s something here that someone wants to keep secret.”

  “I can’t imagine what,” Sara said. “Kidnapping, shipwrecks, you name it, it seems to be going on in this place.”

  “Not to mention murder.” He looked at her. “What if we found a dead body in the bathtub, but later managed to get off the island without being found out?”

  Sara nodded. “We wouldn’t come back, would we?”

  “No. And King’s Isle would become our worst nightmare. We’d spend our lives reading the newspaper and searching the Internet to see if the body had been found yet.”

  “We’d live in terror that they’d come after us,” she added. “And in the business world, word would get out that Charley Dunkirk had checked out this island and said it was a bad bet.”

  “That would mean that whoever didn’t want outsiders here would have another few years to hide whatever he’s hiding.”

  “Good thinking,” Sara said.

  “Come on, Johnson,” R.J. said. “You can give me a better compliment than that.”

  “It’s a good theory, but we don’t know if it’s true or not. Why did you hire me?” she blurted out. “There are a dozen women in your office who can type. Why didn’t you hire one of them?”

  “Your great memory.”

  “You didn’t know anything about me when you hired me—except what was in a personnel file and that wasn’t much.”

  “Think not?” he asked. “You think that story’s true that I picked you out at random?”

  Her eyes were wide. “Yes, I do … did. But you—” She was interrupted by Gideon and the twins bursting into the room.