Carolina Isle Read online

  David had helped her for a while, but the women got to be too much for him. They were fascinated by his good looks and by what Phyllis Vancurren had conspiratorially told them.

  At about one o’clock, she overhead a woman who had severely sun-damaged skin say the word “Gideon.” Ariel went to the girl who was slapping on bright blue eye shadow and took away the brush from her. “I’ll handle this one,” Ariel said and the girl looked at her gratefully.

  “You need laser treatments on your skin,” Ariel said flatly.

  “Don’t I know it. All those years on Fenny’s boat.”

  Ariel had to pause to keep her hand from shaking. Fenny Nezbit. The dead man in the bathtub. The man who was suing them.

  “It’s okay,” the woman said softly. “I won’t let Fenny hurt you on Monday. It’s just a game he plays. He don’t mean no harm in it. He knew that man was rich.”

  “R.J.”

  “Yeah, the older one. He sure is in love with that girl, ain’t he?”

  Again, Ariel paused. “With Sara? She works for him, but I don’t think they’re in love.”

  “Hmph!” the woman said. “You should have seen them this mornin’. I was comin’ here and I guess he thought I was gonna run him over with my truck because he threw her in a ditch and covered her up. If anybody was gonna get hurt, it was him. I can tell you that Fenny ain’t never done that with me.” She leaned toward Ariel. “I bet that young man of yours would do that for you.”

  Ariel glanced at David. Some woman was asking him if the blouse she had on was too low cut. “David is—”

  “Don’t tell me that lie. I know a lie when I hear one. I live with Fenny and that’s all the lyin’ I can take. That boy ain’t no homosexual.”

  “I wonder if I could talk to Mr. Nezbit,” Ariel said. “Maybe tonight I could see him.”

  “He’s gone and I don’t know when he’ll be back. Probably not till Monday when he sees the judge.”

  “Did he leave the island?” Ariel was putting shadow on the woman’s lids, but the wrinkles were making it difficult not to cake it.

  “Naw. He’s just gone up to sleep with his gold.”

  “Sleep with his gold,” Ariel said.

  “Surely you’ve heard about Fenny’s gold.”

  “Phyllis—”

  “Don’t say that woman’s name to me! Her and Gideon—”

  “Who is Gideon?”

  “The devil’s spawn, if you ask me. Evil little bastard.”

  “He’s your son, isn’t he?”

  She looked at Ariel in the mirror and her eyes began to sparkle. “If you say so.”

  Ariel was trying to calm her rapidly beating heart. “When you saw R.J. and Sara, where were they going?”

  “To my house. I told ’em to take care of my kids.”

  Ariel started to smile at the idea of R.J. being stuck baby-sitting, but then she thought of the kid Gideon and of her cousin Sara. “Tell me more about Gideon.”

  “The meanest, most underhanded devil on this island. I’m Eula, by the way. You have kids?”

  “No,” Ariel said.

  “Good thing. Now my girls are just lovely, but Gideon is and always has been out for what he can get. I just hope those friends of yours don’t meet him. They might be taken in by his good looks. He gets that from my side of the family.”

  Ariel couldn’t help pausing at that, and Eula cackled. “You wouldn’t believe it now, but I used to be a real looker. Too much of bein’ on this god-forsaken island and my beauty is gone.”

  “If your husband has gold, then why don’t you leave here?”

  “You think he’d give me any of it? He doles it out by the penny. He gets it from somewhere on the island, then takes it to the mainland and sells it for cash.”

  She’s lying, Ariel thought, watching the way the woman moved her eyes to the side when she spoke. But what was she lying about?

  Ariel didn’t get the time to find out. The door opened and in came a woman who was as round as she was tall, and from the hush that spread, she was someone important. Ariel quickly learned she was the wife of the mayor of King’s Isle and Ariel had to leave Eula Nezbit to tend to her.

  It wasn’t until 5:00 that evening that Ariel was able to speak to David. “Where have you been?” she hissed at him. The sisters who owned the stores were locking the doors. There wasn’t much merchandise left in the dress shop and the beauty shop was out of hair dye and most everything else. Everyone except Ariel looked exhausted.

  “Could we get something to eat?” David asked, cutting his eyes at the two women.

  “As soon as we divvy up the proceeds,” Ariel said. “I’ve kept a running total in my head so I have an idea what I’m owed. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  One of the sisters looked at David as though to say “what a shame,” then went to the cash register and began punching keys. Ten minutes later, she handed Ariel some bills.

  Before Ariel could say anything, David pushed her out the back door.

  “Two hundred and thirty dollars?” Ariel said. “Is that all I get? I cleaned out that place.”

  “They sold about twenty-three grand of merchandise; cut that in half for what they paid for it, so twenty percent of the profit comes to two-thirty,” he said.

  Ariel folded the bills and stuffed them inside her bra. “There must be ways to increase the profit,” she said, then smiled. “But I’ve never had so much fun in my life. Do you think I could open a dress shop in Arundel?”

  “If you want to kill your mother instantly.”

  “I’d want her to work in it.”

  David started to express his horror, then saw that Ariel was teasing. “Come on, rich girl, and buy me dinner. I want to hear every word of what you found out.”

  Twenty minutes later they were in the pub and the atmosphere couldn’t have been more different than it had been the first time they’d been there. Nearly every female who came in waved to Ariel and asked how she looked. Throughout the greetings, Ariel kept discreetly telling them what to do: soften their lipstick, flatten their hair, cover their belly buttons.

  “So you didn’t find out anything?” David asked.

  “Just that this kid Gideon is a sick person. The local mass murderer in the making. Everyone on the island stays away from him.” She leaned toward him. “He takes care of two little kids that Eula said are his. The town thinks that they’re hers, but they aren’t.”

  “So who’s the mother?”

  Ariel leaned back. “She wouldn’t tell me, but I think it’s Phyllis Vancurren. If she had her children taken away by Nezbit, maybe that’s why she drinks.”

  “This whole island makes me sick,” David said.

  “I don’t think we’ll have any problems on Monday. I think R.J. will be fined something and the case dismissed.”

  “Then what?” David asked. “The ferry comes for us and we leave the island? Don’t you think that they’ll come after us when they open the freezer?”

  “Or they’ll go after Phyllis,” Ariel said, looking down at her plate of broiled scallops.

  “I thought you hated her, that you didn’t trust her.”

  “I don’t, but I don’t think she’s a murderer. If the body is found in her freezer and what with all the evidence you and R.J. put on it, I think Phyllis may be accused. I don’t think she knows anything.”

  “So who does? By now you know the whole town, so who’s guilty?”

  “I think somebody wanted Fenny’s gold and when he wouldn’t give it to them, they killed him. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it was their idea of a joke to put the body in our bathtub.”

  David looked at her for a moment. “I bet if you went to a woman whose husband is a fisherman, she could get him to take you off this island.”

  “I thought of that. In fact, I almost asked one of them to do it. After all, R.J. is the only one who has anything pending against him. The rest of us …” She shrugged.

  “Ariel,” David said soft