Carolina Isle Read online

  David’s map was easy to follow. She kept the water on her right, and when she saw a huge tree with half of it burned away by lightning, she put the map away. The rock looked solid, but when she tiptoed along a ledge with her arms spread out, she found a cut that overlapped itself. As she slipped through the narrow opening, she saw why Nezbit kept himself so thin. Most adults couldn’t fit between the rocks, but Ariel, at just a hundred and five pounds, could.

  It was so dark inside the rock, she could see nothing. As she felt her way around, her heart was beating rapidly. A hidden place like this was a den snakes would love. When her hand touched an old-fashioned lantern, she sighed in relief. Next to it were matches. She knew how to light it—thanks to years of watching Little House on the Prairie.

  Holding the lantern aloft, she looked about the cave. It was tiny, about six feet by eight, with a stone floor and a roof that seemed to go up to infinity. Against the far wall was an old wooden fruit crate with things inside it. She put the lantern down and sat down by the crate.

  Inside the crate were what looked to be the contents of a safe. Inside a plastic bag were two old, mildewed passports of Ray and Alice Erickson, age fifty-five and fifty-six, ownership papers of a forty-eight-foot sailboat, and a last will and testament. Beside the packet of papers was a jewelry box, a big thing made of mahogany, with lots of little drawers and two handles on the side.

  Ariel lifted the lid, surprised it wasn’t locked, but then who else could find the place besides Fenny Nezbit? And David, Ariel thought.

  The jewelry chest was nearly empty, only two pairs of earrings inside, but the velvet lining showed the imprint of many other pieces of jewelry.

  Legends, myths and, ultimately, a murder, all caused by the contents of a woman’s jewelry chest.

  Leaning back against the wall, Ariel opened the last will and testament and read it. Ray and Alice Erickson left everything to their son and daughter, to be split equally between them. There was a codicil attached and it told everything. Two people had retired after years of running a successful jewelry store, sold everything they owned, and bought a sailboat. They apologized to their children for their seeming irrationality, but they were sick of working six days a week. They said they planned to take the best of the jewelry with them, as they had one last deal to make in Saudi Arabia.

  “They never made it,” Ariel whispered, folding the will and putting it back in the bag. It seemed that they’d wrecked their new sailboat and their treasure had been stolen and gradually sold by Fenny Nezbit.

  Ariel wondered if he’d killed Mr. and Mrs. Erickson. “No one will ever know,” she said aloud.

  She put the last two pairs of earrings in the bag with the papers and shoved it down the back of her trousers. As she took a step toward the opening, she heard a sound. She leaped the next few feet to the door and looked up. It was a rescue helicopter!

  Stepping to the edge, she waved her arms and the pilot saw her. He turned around and another man, the copilot, used a bullhorn to ask, “Are you injured?”

  “No!” Ariel yelled and shook her head, then she pointed to her right with both her arms. The injured people were that way.

  “We have all the others,” the man said through his horn. “Go to the ground and we’ll pick you up.”

  Ariel said, “Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes” all the way down. She slipped once, then took a deep breath and went down more slowly.

  The helicopter landed and she ran to it, ducking against the wind of the blades. “Are you Ariel Weatherly?” the copilot asked and she yelled, “Yes!”

  She scrambled into the backseat. Part of her wanted to cry in relief and part of her felt elated. Exhilarated.

  The copilot turned to her and pointed down. On the ground below them was an ambulance. R.J. was standing by a police car, a twin on each side of him, each holding one of his hands. Four big North Carolina policemen were helping two handcuffed people into the cars: Larry Lassiter and Eula Nezbit. David, Sara, and Gideon were missing, but Ariel figured they were being treated for their injuries. She leaned back against the seat and smiled as King’s Isle was left in the background and they headed toward Arundel.

  She was going home.

  Epilogue

  “TO US!” R.J. SAID, RAISING HIS CHAMpagne glass high.

  The four of them were in the pub on King’s Isle, which was empty except for them. But then R.J. now owned the place so they could do what they wanted. It was over a year since they’d first arrived on King’s Isle and many things had changed since then.

  “To my brilliant wife,” R.J. said, looking at Sara with loving eyes. “And here’s to winning an Emmy.”

  “Thank you,” Sara said, lifting her glass of orange juice. She was six weeks pregnant.

  “And to mine,” David said, lifting his glass to Ariel. “Who would have known you could write?”

  “No one believed I could do anything,” Ariel said, “including me.”

  “Your script was brilliant,” Sara said, “and I thank you very much for it. I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I enjoyed every minute of working on our movie.”

  David again lifted his drink to Ariel. “To my wife, a woman I thought I knew but didn’t.”

  R.J. looked at Sara. “And to my wife, who never had an idea that I hired her because I loved her.”

  Ariel looked at R.J. “Thank you for taking my script to an agent.”

  “Wait a minute!” David said. “I was the one who read it and I was the one who took it to R.J.”

  “And I was the one who took it from him,” Sara said.

  “And changed it,” Ariel said.

  “Tweaked it,” Sara answered.

  Four weeks after they’d left King’s Isle, Ariel found out she was pregnant with David’s baby. A wedding was rushed through, but thanks to her mother’s years of planning, it was not going to be a small affair. Between Southern society and R.J.’s contacts, it would be the wedding of the year. Three days before the wedding, Sara asked if Ariel would mind very much making it a double. A gown was bought, more champagne purchased, and there was a wedding that Arundel wouldn’t soon forget.

  For the next eight months, Ariel was hovered over by her mother and David and his mother. Bored, Ariel began to write about what happened to them on King’s Isle. Somehow, the story seemed to gradually evolve into a script. She ordered a book on script writing, followed the format as best she could, and put their adventure onto paper.

  She loved dramatizing how Lassiter and Fenny had quarreled, then the lawyer had shot Fenny through the head. It had been Eula who’d helped him carry the body up Phyllis’s creaking stairs, hiding it in the bathtub. “Let those fancy folk from Arundel take the blame,” Eula had said.

  “Except the kid that wrote the paper,” Lassiter had said. After he and Fenny had pulled their usual trick of having the rich tourists arrested, Lassiter had found David Tredwell’s prizewinning essay and realized the boy had seen Fenny slipping into where his treasure was hidden.

  For years, Fenny had dangled his treasure—“an endless horde,” he’d said it was—in front of everyone, but no one had been able to find it. The night R.J. had been arrested, Fenny, drunk as always, had nearly fallen on the targets, and Lassiter, fed up, had told him that someone else knew where the treasure was. Lassiter had only half believed it, but he liked, for once, having the upper hand. When Lassiter quoted some of the essay, Fenny had gone berserk. He ran to his truck, pulled out a pistol from under the seat, and threatened to kill Lassiter. That’s when the attorney realized that maybe the kid’s essay was true. There was a scuffle, the gun went off, and Fenny lay dead. Lassiter would have gone to the police, but Eula raised up from where she’d been sleeping in the back of the truck. She’d heard it all. Larry Lassiter had been nervous, afraid, but Eula was as cool as ice. She was thrilled to get rid of a husband she’d hated. She came up with a plan instantly. They carried Fenny’s body up Phyllis’s stairs, dumped the body in the tub, and hid in the dark living r