Desperation on Wildflower Island

by Michelle Files

  “Ha, ha.” She made a face at Sebastian. “But really, that’s horrible. I hope that doesn’t come back to hurt Tim and Roxanne, since it happened here. You know how people can be sue happy,” Cecily said. She had a worried look on her face.

  “Oh, I doubt it. It isn’t their fault that he choked on something,” Sebastian responded gently.

  Sebastian stayed and chatted with Cecily for a little while. She actually liked him, as a friend. He was fun and amused her. But she wasn’t interested in dating him. Because of that, she did her best to be nice, but went on with her work and ignored his advances as much as possible. She didn’t want to encourage him. He didn’t seem to notice.

  Jeanette Hale saw Sebastian the moment she walked into the bar and their eyes locked for a brief moment, before she quickly turned away. Ah crap, just what I need, she thought. She purposely stopped three barstools away from Sebastian, hoping he would not engage her in conversation. She would have turned around and left, but she wanted to talk to Cecily. Jeanette leaned forward on the bar and let her shoulder length, jet black hair cover the side of her face. That should be enough to convince him that she didn’t want to even acknowledge that she had seen him.

  Sebastian smiled to himself. Jeanette was uncomfortable, he could see it in her face when she realized he was sitting there.

  “Hi Jeanette, darlin’. How are you this fine day?” Sebastian said to her. His voice was kind of drawn out in a teasing sort of way.

  Jeanette looked over sideways at him, her hazel eyes not completely focusing on his own. “Hi. I’m fine, thanks,” she replied without turning her head and looking at him directly.

  Cecily had witnessed the entire, odd exchange between Sebastian and Jeanette. She stayed at the opposite end of the bar, waiting to see what they would say or do next. When Jeanette waved her over, Cecily was disappointed. She had been enjoying the show.

  When Cecily walked up to her, Jeanette was relieved. She didn’t want to talk to Sebastian anymore than she had to. Though she was married to Jacob, Jeanette and Sebastian had had a brief, very brief, fling a couple of years ago. She did her very best to avoid him after that. Something that was not easy in a small town, on a small island. As far as she knew, her husband never found out, and she wanted to keep it that way, even though she and Jacob were currently separated. There was no way that she wanted the town to add her name to the ever increasing list of Sebastian’s conquests. She had never told a soul, and prayed that Sebastian was also discreet. He knew she was married and he had promised not to say anything. She was pretty sure that he never did. If he did, she was sure that Cecily would know about it…and that meant that everyone would know about it. Jeanette really liked Cecily, but didn’t trust her to keep her yap shut. It was an impossibility for the biggest mouth on the island to have juicy gossip like that and keep it to herself.

  Cecily knew something was up with Jeanette and Sebastian, and had a good idea what that probably was, but she didn’t know anything for sure. She had quizzed Jeanette about Sebastian, but she was tight lipped, and it annoyed Cecily to no end. Cecily was quite the opposite. She talked about everyone and everything that she knew. What was the harm? It was all in fun. She never intended to tell people something that would hurt one of her friends. However, that didn’t always happen, and she had lost a few friends over the years.

  It just dawned on Cecily that that might be exactly why Jeanette didn’t tell her any details. She claimed that she barely knew Sebastian and there was nothing to tell. Cecily didn’t believe her.

  “Did you hear about the boy that almost died out there at the cafe earlier today?” Cecily whispered to Jeanette, positioning herself between Sebastian and Jeanette as best as she could. She didn’t want Sebastian overhearing their conversation and trying to get in the middle of it. She was hoping he would get bored and find something better to do, something that didn’t involve her.

  “Yeah, I was actually there, with Isabella. Plus, it’s all over the island,” Jeanette whispered back, glancing quickly over at Sebastian, who was drinking his beer, and not really paying attention to the two of them.

  After about an hour, one of his off again and on again girlfriends showed up and they left together. Sebastian noticed Cecily and Jeanette watching them leave, and it made him smile to himself.

  Chapter 7

  A few hours later, Sheriff Rex walked in the front door of the Wildflower Inn. He found one of the twins running the front desk.

  “Hello… Mary?” he asked her tentatively. He never could tell her from her sister.

  “Yes, I’m Mary. Hi sheriff,” she replied.

  She was so tired of having to confirm to people which twin she was, but knew it was par for the course. At least when she went off to college, hopefully without her sister in tow, she could just be ‘Mary’ and not part of a set.

  Rex smiled to himself that he got the right twin for a change. He usually guessed wrong.

  “Mary, I would like to speak to your parents. Can you get them for me please?”

  She jumped up to fetch them in short order. She had always been afraid of the sheriff, especially after all the trouble she and Piper were in at the beginning of the summer. Someone else had killed the boy that was found beaten on the beach, but they were involved in the investigation anyway.

  Tim greeted Rex about a minute later and led him out to the cafe to a table that Roxanne was sitting at. She was doing paperwork in the evening breeze. The papers and the breeze were not an ideal combination, but she was tired of being cooped up in the office. Roxanne had all of her receipts spread out haphazardly around the table, and all were weighted down with rocks from her garden. She was surprised to see the sheriff walk out with Tim. She stood up to greet him, her blonde hair dancing in the wind.

  “Hi, Sheriff. How are you?” she asked as she shook his hand.

  Though she had no personal problem with the sheriff, she felt that her family had had way too much contact with him in the last few months, due to the murder investigation earlier in the summer.

  “Oh, I’m good, thank you. You?” Rex replied. He took in Roxanne as she stood in the late summer sunshine, her blue eyes sparkling. He always appreciated a beautiful woman.

  “Just trying to get some work done,” she replied, as she turned back to the table and started lifting rocks. She gathered her papers all into a single stack, placing one of the rocks on top and tossing the rest over the railing, into the garden. “Please, sit down,” Roxanne motioned to one of the empty chairs in front of her.

  As they all sat down, Rex spoke first. “Well folks, I thought I would just come over and give you an update on Eric Doyle. He’s the boy that got carried off in an ambulance this afternoon here at your cafe.”

  Tim and Roxanne looked at Rex with rapt attention, both of them leaning forward.

  “Well, it seems that he is in a coma and isn’t expected to survive.” Rex looked carefully at the Carmichaels as he said it. He wanted to gauge their reactions, though he really didn’t think they had done anything to the boy.

  “Oh my god. That’s terrible,” Roxanne responded. “That poor boy. And his parents. Do you know what happened to him? I mean, did he choke on something, like we thought?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I want to ask you what you know about it.”

  “What do you mean?” Roxanne asked, tilting her head to the side slightly.

  “I just want to know what you saw,” Rex replied.

  “We just saw what everyone else saw,” Tim responded. “One of his friends started screaming that he was choking. Mary ran over to see if she could help, since she just got done taking a CPR class. But, she said he was breathing when she got to him, so there was nothing she could do. Then he just vomited and passed out. That’s pretty much it. Not long after, the ambulance showed up.”

  Roxanne nodded her head in agreement. “Yeah, that’s what we saw.”

  Without responding, Rex looked out toward the ocean, deep in thought. He watched a
couple of seagulls walking on the beach in search of a meal. Tim and Roxanne quietly watched the sheriff, waiting for him to continue. They were uncomfortable with his questions and just wanted it to be over with. They both wondered if the sheriff could possibly be thinking that they were responsible for Eric’s coma in any way. Serving food to people was always a risk, usually a very minor risk though. People could choke, and people could get food poisoning. In all the years they had been running the cafe, neither of those things had ever happened to any of their customers. Until now. And it scared the life out of them.

  “Did you notice anyone milling around his food?” Rex finally asked both of them. It was a very casual sort of remark, as if he had just come up with the question.

  Both Tim and Roxanne looked at each other and shook their heads slowly.

  “No. What do you mean by that?” Roxanne asked him. “Didn’t he just choke on something?”

  “Sheriff, I feel like you aren’t telling us something. Should we be worried?” Tim asked, nervously rubbing his chin.

  “Well, I don’t know yet if you should be worried. Eric did not choke on his food. The doctor said it looks like he was poisoned.”

  Both Tim and Roxanne gasped simultaneously.

  “Poisoned? What in the world! You mean deliberately?” Roxanne exclaimed. She started visibly shaking and wrapped her arms around the front of her body to try to control it. She wondered if that made her look guilty in some way.

  “That can’t be right,” Tim told him. “How could he possibly have been poisoned? You don’t think we had anything to do with that, do you?” Tim’s face flushed as his blood pressure rose.

  “Well, did you?” Rex asked calmly. He was the calm sort, it was his usual way of questioning people. It tended to work very well, putting people at ease and getting them to be more open in their answers. But Tim did not look very calm at all to Rex.

  “Sheriff, no, of course not.” Tim was getting a bit agitated. “We’ve owned this inn and cafe for almost 20 years and nothing like this has ever happened. You can’t really think we had something to do with that, do you?” Tim jumped up out of his seat as he spoke and began pacing the floor. He knew how it must look, but he just couldn’t help himself.

  Rex sat there watching Tim, who seemed a bit more agitated than he needed to be. Guilty people got agitated when questioned. Rex bent over the table and wrote something down in his notebook.

  Roxanne reached over and took Tim’s hand as he passed by her. She gently guided him back into his seat.

  “Sweetheart, the sheriff here is not accusing us of anything. He’s just asking questions. Right, Sheriff?” She turned to Rex for confirmation.

  “Right,” Rex replied.

  He had known the Carmichaels as long as he could remember. He knew Tim had grown up on the island and remembered him as a well behaved boy that never got into any trouble with the law. He didn’t really think Tim or Roxanne had anything to do with poisoning Eric. He had to question them though. It could have been an employee. Or, it could have happened before Eric even showed up at the cafe. Rex didn’t know the answer to that. Yet.

  “Tim, I just have to ask the questions. You know that, right?” Rex added.

  “Yeah, I guess. Sorry.” Tim said. “It’s just that, well…you know how fast rumors spread on this island. It doesn’t matter if they have proof. If anyone even thinks we had anything to do with what happened to Eric, it could really hurt business.”

  Tim thought about what he had just said for a moment. “Oh, that didn’t come out right. Of course we feel badly for Eric and his family, I just meant…”

  “I know what you meant,” Rex said, holding up his palm and interrupting Tim in the middle of his sentence. “And yes, rumors can be really bad for business around here, I know. We are trying to be as discreet as we possibly can.” Rex meant that too. He genuinely liked the Carmichaels and didn’t want any harm coming to them or their business. They were a nice family and their inn and cafe were really good for the island.

  Roxanne looked at Rex nervously. She was worried that Tim was making them look guilty, when they weren’t. She and the sheriff could both see that Tim was agitated and his pacing didn’t help.

  “What kind of poison was it?” Roxanne asked.

  “That we don’t know yet. There are thousands of possibilities and the tests will take time,” Rex answered. “It’s even possible that he took something himself, without knowing that it was poisoned. We just don’t know yet. So, I’m getting all the information I can and questioning anyone that may have had any contact with Eric that day.”

  “I can’t imagine that it happened here. How could someone get it into his food here at the cafe? He was sitting there the whole time,” Roxanne told the sheriff.

  “Not the whole time.”

  All three of them turned toward the voice to see Lola standing in the doorway. She had been listening in.

  “Well, well, who is this young lady?” Rex asked. Her appearance didn’t faze Rex at all. He had seen it all in his decades as the sheriff on the island.

  “Oh, this is Lola. Lola, come over here and meet our sheriff.” Tim stood up and motioned for her to come over to the table.

  She seemed reluctant, but she walked over and said hi to the sheriff.

  “Lola is staying here with us for a while. She just arrived this morning,” Roxanne told him.

  “I see. It’s nice to meet you, Lola,” Rex said to her with a warm smile.

  Everyone on the island knew that the Wildflower Inn housed troubled girls, and it took just one look for Rex to see that she was quite troubled.

  “Lola, can you tell me what you meant by that comment?” Rex asked her.

  Lola and Tim remained standing, while the sheriff spoke to Lola.

  “I just mean that there was a shark sighting right over there during lunch.” She pointed and they all turned to look at the ocean. “Everybody acted like it was the most amazing thing they had ever seen. I mean, it’s an ocean. Aren’t there lots of sharks in it?” Lola asked.

  They all smiled. She had a point.

  “Anyway, while everyone was freaking out over the stupid sharks, they all ran over there by the railing to get a better look. Anyone could have put something in his food while he wasn’t looking,” Lola told them.

  “Did you see someone put something in his food?” Rex asked her directly.

  “Well…no. I wasn’t paying that close attention to his table. I was watching everyone flip out about the dumb sharks. I’m just saying that it is possible, because he wasn’t sitting at the table the whole time. None of the boys were.”

  “Hmm, that makes this case quite troublesome. There were how many, maybe 20 or 30 people at the cafe when it happened?” Rex asked.

  “Oh, at least 60 people,” Tim replied. “This place was packed and there were a bunch more waiting in line to get in.”

  “Lola, that’s all for now. If I have anymore questions, I know where to find you.” With that, Rex dismissed her.

  Lola disappeared back into the inn.

  “That’s an interesting one you got there,” Rex said to Tim and Roxanne.

  “Yeah, you have no idea,” Tim replied.

  Two days later, Eric Doyle died. He never regained consciousness. Though he was a trouble maker and not very well liked around the island, most of the island’s residents were very upset by his death. The biggest worry was that he was poisoned at the Wildflower Cafe, right out in the open, in front of everyone…and not a single person noticed.

  The residents spoke of nothing else for days. A small memorial service was held, only his family and close friends attended. His father got up and spoke at the service. One of the things he told everyone was that Eric had always wanted to take a ski trip to Colorado, but never got the chance.

  Chapter 8

  OVER IN COLORADO

  Catherine Sharpe cried frequently over the baby that died so soon after she gave birth. Oh, it got a bit easier over time, as th
ings tend to do, but it still hurt, even after all the years that had passed.

  Her life improved greatly after that fateful day. At the time she gave birth, Catherine was homeless, living on the streets, and barely getting by. She had no idea at the time how in the world she was going to be able to take care of a newborn, but she would have figured out something. There were shelters and maybe some relative that would have taken pity on them and invited them into her home. She never got a chance to find out though, since her child died within hours of being born.

  When that happened, she left the hospital alone. Her husband was in jail and she had never been so scared in all her life.

  About two weeks after she was discharged from the hospital, Catherine got a job in an Italian restaurant as a waitress. She was pretty, friendly, and outgoing. This combination made her a popular waitress, resulting in hefty tips. With the money, she was able to get an apartment and get her life back on track. It didn’t take long for the owner of the restaurant, a gruff looking man, about ten years her senior, to notice her. Regardless of his looks, Antonio adored her and treated her with great kindness. He was one of the sweetest men that Catherine had ever met, and she fell hard for him. They married a few months later.

  Antonio Rossi was the polar opposite of Donald Sharpe, her ex-husband, and Catherine could not have been any happier. Unfortunately, her happiness didn’t last forever. After nine wonderful years together, where she finally found out what a husband was supposed to be, Antonio had a heart attack while in the kitchen of the restaurant one night. Catherine was in the office doing some paperwork, when she heard the commotion. She went running in to find him unconscious on the floor, while one of the cooks was performing CPR. He was revived shortly thereafter. When the ambulance showed up, Catherine was sitting on the floor with her dear Antonio’s head in her lap, telling him how much she loved him, as her tears dripped slowly down her face, onto his cheek. She wiped her tears from his face lovingly as she spoke to him. She smiled in an attempt to make him feel better. Catherine didn’t want his last moments to be filled with worry about his own fate. She wanted him to focus on her, and her only.