Carolina Isle Read online

  “I vote that we go to that place where we saw the sign, ROOMS TO LET, and see if we can get some accommodation for the night,” Ariel said as she held up a gold necklace with four pearls on it. “Do you think this will buy us a couple of rooms for a night? Or two?”

  “One night is all we need,” R.J. said. “Tomorrow I’ll find a telephone and get us out of here. What say you, my lords and ladies, that we join this play?”

  Ariel grimaced. “What I want to know is, is it a tragedy or a comedy?”

  “Life is what we make of it,” David said. His tone was so exaggeratedly happy that Sara and R.J. groaned. “Okay, so maybe in this place we have to work a little harder to be able to see the good.” He wiped his hands over his eyes. “I could almost believe that none of what happened did. Are we really to appear in court on Monday morning to answer a charge of killing a dog?”

  “No,” R.J. said firmly. “Once I get hold of my lawyer, he’ll send half a dozen men down here and drown the entire police force in paper. There won’t be any court hearing on Monday.” He glanced at Sara and gave a little smile to let her know that his plan was exactly what she’d told the cops would happen.

  Sara had to turn away so R.J. wouldn’t see her smile. She knew how his mind worked. So maybe she’d been wrong to try to strong-arm the police here on little King’s Isle, but it was the way she’d learned from watching R.J. He had power and he knew how to use it. She had every confidence in the world that R.J. would get them out of this ridiculous situation.

  “Shall we go to the rooming house?” Sara asked. “We might as well enjoy our time here,” she said, then her stomach gave a growl. “Sorry.”

  “My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut,” R.J. said, making Sara look at him in surprise. Usually he was careful to not show his country upbringing, so he never used old sayings like that one.

  “Do you think they sell cosmetics in this town?” Ariel asked. “Lancôme or Estée Lauder, maybe.”

  “Maybe Maybelline,” Sara said as they walked down the main street and headed toward where they’d seen the house with the sign.

  People smiled at them as they walked, but no one stared. It all seemed so normal that with every step they took, it was harder to remember the events of earlier that day.

  “Were we really in jail?” Sara asked softly. “Or did we make that up?”

  Ariel looked at her cousin as though she’d lost her mind. “We have no car and no money. We have to spend the night here, but we have no luggage. How can you think that we made anything up?”

  “It just seems so … I don’t know … normal, I guess.”

  “It doesn’t seem normal at all,” Ariel said. “One minute the town is empty and the next it’s full of people who are doing their best not to look at us.”

  “She’s right,” R.J. said. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

  “I agree,” David said.

  Sara sighed. “I’m just so glad to get away from work for a few days that—” Breaking off, she glanced at R.J. “Sorry.”

  “No need to be,” he said. “I’m glad to get away from work too.” They could see the house with the faded sign just ahead of them. R.J. looked at David. “At work, I have an assistant who is quite efficient—”

  “Except that she can’t type or take shorthand,” Sara said.

  “Right. But she can remember things. She’s better than any of those talking machines that you have to type things into.”

  “So what’s wrong with her?” David asked, opening the little gate in front of the house.

  “She hates me. Pure and simple hates me. Most of the time when I ask her a question she won’t even answer.”

  As David let the others go through the gate, he looked at Sara. “Is that true? Does his assistant hate him?”

  Sara gave him a little smile, but when she didn’t answer, R.J. laughed. “See what I mean?”

  They walked up the stairs to the porch of the big old house and R.J. knocked on the front door. They heard nothing.

  “The owner’s probably in the streets with the other residents pretending to be something he’s not,” Ariel said.

  Sara raised her hand to knock again, but the door was opened by a woman—and the four of them were shocked into speechlessness. She was tall, good-looking, in her early forties, and dressed in cotton trousers and a shirt. It would have been an ordinary outfit if it hadn’t been so tight. Buttons bulged over her large breasts. She’d tied the tail of the shirt around her waist so there was an inch of trim, tanned flesh showing. Her trousers were tightly belted and so snug around her hips that if she’d had a tattoo you probably could have read it.

  But it was her expression that was the most lascivious. She looked greedy as she smiled warmly at the two men. The women stepped back and the men stepped forward.

  “Hello,” David and R.J. said in unison. They were in front of Sara and Ariel, blocking their view. “We’ve come about—” Again, they said the words together.

  The woman laughed. “I know who you are and I can guess why you’re here. Come in, please, but don’t mind the way I look. I’ve been painting the back hallway.”

  David and R.J. stepped through the doorway, their eyes on the woman and hers on them.

  Ariel looked at Sara as though to ask if they should dare enter the house. “As long as she doesn’t try to get in the bathtub with me, I don’t care what she looks like,” Sara said, following the men into the house.

  When the four of them were inside, the woman said, “I’m Phyllis Vancurren and welcome to King’s Isle, although I imagine you wish you’d never set foot on the place.” Turning, she started down the hall, motioning for them to follow. “I just made some tea. Would you like some?”

  David and R.J. practically ran after her, but Sara and Ariel held back. “I like Larry Lassiter the lawyer more than I do her,” Ariel said.

  “I’m sure she’s a fine person and has nothing on her mind except giving us food and a place to stay.”

  When Ariel looked at Sara with wide eyes, Sara grinned. “If they’re casting a play for the woman who looks in the mirror to see if she’s the most beautiful, then kills the girl who’s prettier than she is, there she is.”

  “Come along, girls,” Phyllis called over her shoulder. “By the time you two slowpokes get to the kitchen the tea will be all gone.”

  “Who do you think she wants?” Sara asked under her breath.

  “David,” Ariel said instantly. “She wants David.”

  “I don’t see why. R.J. is smarter.”

  “You don’t think about smart when you want to go to bed with someone.”

  “True, but the morning does come,” Sara said.

  The two women walked into the kitchen to see R.J. and David sitting at a big oak table drinking iced tea out of tall glasses.

  “I was beginning to think that the two of you got lost,” Phyllis said, her voice a sort of purr.

  “Do you have a telephone?” Sara asked.

  “I already told R.J. that no one on the island has a working phone right now. And we won’t have any for about ten more days. A trawler hit the underground cable and cut it in half.” Phyllis filled more glasses with ice and tea. “Usually we’re quite modern here on King’s Isle. We have telephones and even the Internet, but right now we’re in the dark ages. The dark ages with electricity and flush toilets, that is.” She looked at R.J. and David as though she’d made a very funny joke. They laughed as though she had.

  “Do you have rooms to rent?” Ariel asked.

  “Honey, as you can see, that’s all I do have. I have rooms and rooms and more rooms. They all need painting and fixing up, but I do have them.”

  Again the men laughed as though she’d said something witty.

  Sara gave a fake smile. “So how much do you charge?”

  “Whatever you have. Or you can send me a check when you get back to the mainland. I’m flexible.” She looked at R.J. with lowered lashes. “You look like a man w