by Kylie Logan
11
What with seeing Levi again, having no choice but to fire the longtime attorney who I thought was also a personal friend, and wondering not only what on earth had happened to Sister Helene, but who (or what) I might have seen lurking in the garden at Water’s Edge, it had been a long—and not a very good—day. All I wanted to do when I got back to the B and B that Tuesday night was grab a glass of wine and put up my feet. I would have done it, too, if I hadn’t walked in the back door, gone into my suite to find my slippers, come back out, and—
“Mr. Stevens!” At the sight of Tyler Stevens in my parlor, I clutched my bunny slippers to my chest and jumped back at the same time he jumped off the couch.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He flushed a color that he, no doubt, would have compared to the crimson of a cardinal’s wings. “I got here a little while ago and there was no one around. I waited on the front porch for a while, but there was this cat . . .”
His lips puckered and his gaze trailed toward the window and the porch beyond and even before he added, “I’m allergic and besides, that cat didn’t seem very friendly,” I knew he’d had an encounter with Jerry Garcia.
I looked toward the front porch, too, but there was no sign of the felonious feline out there now. “He lives next door,” I explained to Tyler. “And he doesn’t have any business over here.”
“Exactly what I thought. Because you have great eaves, you know.” Again, he glanced out the window and up, looking toward the porch ceiling and the gingerbread woodwork that edged it. “Perfect for nesting birds. If there’s a cat around . . . well, the consequences could be ugly.”
To tell the truth, I was more worried about Jerry peeing in my potted flowers.
“I shooed him away,” Tyler reported. “But I came inside, anyway. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Not at all. But—”
“But what am I doing here?” Tyler grinned. “Warblers. It’s always the warblers, isn’t it?”
Apparently it was, but since he already knew that, it seemed a waste of time to point it out.
His smile disappeared. “There wasn’t a one to be seen in Sandusky. But of course, the weather was dreadful, so I guess that’s to be expected. Then this morning when it cleared, I thought I’d have better luck. Not so. I took a whole week off from work so I thought I should at least make the effort to make the time productive. This afternoon, I was checking one of the Internet sites that lists sightings, and lo and behold, someone here on the island just reported a Geothlypis formosa, a Kentucky warbler! I caught the first ferry I could and if you still have my room open—”
“I do, and you paid me more than you owed me when you left so that’s no problem.”
Tyler rubbed his hands together. “Perfect! If breakfast is a problem tomorrow—”
“It isn’t,” I assured him. “I have other guests,” I added, then went to get him a key.
Tyler marched upstairs just as the whole troupe of librarians was coming down. They lined up in front of me just as I slid my feet into my bunny slippers.
“Go ahead!” When she poked Angela in the ribs with one elbow, Marianne’s smile was mischievous. “Ask her. I know this lady. I’m telling you, she won’t mind.”
I looked from librarian to librarian. “What am I supposed to mind?”
“Well, we hope you don’t.” Joyce stepped forward. “You see—”
“We were wondering,” Carole said.
“If it’s possible and not too much trouble,” Bette added.
“If we could stay a couple more days.” As if she was making a wish when she blew out her birthday candles, Angela squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for my answer.
I had gone from one guest—Joe Roscoe—to six in the span of just that many minutes, and I considered the implication, but only for a moment. “Of course!” I told the librarians and there were smiles all around.
Smiles were good things. Smiles helped wash away the tension that over the course of the last few hours had bunched in my shoulders and turned the muscles in my neck to a network of tightly cramped pain-makers.
“We’re going out to celebrate.” Marianne spoke up. “Not that we just assumed you’d agree to let them stay. We figured if you didn’t, we’d celebrate what a wonderful few days it’s been.”
“And if you did, we’d celebrate the fact that we can stay a little longer,” Angela added.
“You’ll come with us?” Carole asked.
I declined with the lie that I’d already eaten and watched them pile out of the house.
At the last second, Marianne turned around and stepped back into the entryway. She peered into the parlor. “Your Mr. Roscoe’s not around, is he?”
As far as I knew, he wasn’t, and I told her so without bothering to add that he wasn’t my Mr. Roscoe.
“He didn’t stop in at the library today,” Marianne said. “No big deal, I’m sure he was busy. But I wasn’t, not after toddler story hour. So I spent some time going over the history of the island’s families. I hate to disappoint him. He seems like such a nice man. Would you tell him that I can’t find any records of any Roscoe family? I’ll keep looking. Tell him that, too, and tell him to stop in or give me a call and let me know some other family names. It never hurts to look at other branches of the family tree. I’m sure we’ll have more success there.”
I assured her I would give Joe the message and watched her scramble down the front steps to catch up with her friends and I will admit, when I closed the door behind the librarians, the first thing that came to my mind was the benefits of peace and quiet.
I forced myself to exhale a long, slow breath.
Peace and quiet. That’s what I was looking for. As nice as they all were, I knew it was something I never would have gotten if I went out with the talkative librarians.
Especially if they insisted on talking about the parallels between what was happening on the island and And Then There Were None.
I tried to work a kink out of my neck, but it was no easier doing that than it was to put aside the mystery of everything going on at Water’s Edge. With that in mind, I poured a glass of Château Lafite Rothschild 1996 from a bottle Jason had given me as a Christmas gift a couple years earlier. I’d always thought I would share the wine with Jason and his wife, Amelia, but after our phone call earlier in the day . . . rather than dwell on the empty feeling that settled between my heart and my stomach, I grabbed my tablet and settled down on the couch in my suite and set the wine on the table where I could as easily reach it as I could enjoy the play of light against its gorgeous ruby purple coloring.
A sip of wine and a smile of appreciation for its incredible taste, and I was ready to get down to business.
The business, of course, was murder, and even though I didn’t want to think about it, I couldn’t help but wonder if the librarians were onto something.
Lucky for me, I’m a quick reader and I skimmed through the book, then found a movie version of And Then There Were None online. The old black-and-white flick had a happy ending that was not true to the book, but it gave me another look at the story and a better chance to make a mental list of what I was dealing with.
A remote island off the English coast.
A group of ten strangers brought there by a mysterious host.
And murder.
I knew that in Christie’s book, each murder was planned and executed (even I cringed when the word popped into my head) to right a wrong. See, each of those guests on the island was guilty of a murder and each had sidestepped the long arm of the law for one reason or another. The man who invited them to the island was intent on finding . . . well, not revenge exactly . . . it was more like justice. He was judge, jury, and executioner, killing them off one by one.
Even another sip of wine didn’t wash away the bad taste the thought left in my mouth.
Wise words, but they did little to relieve the worry that settled on my shoulders.
Thinking, I tapped my fingers against the tablet keyboard and thought about the old movie I’d just watched and the book it was based on in relation to what was happening at Water’s Edge.
Island.
Check.
Ten guests.
Check.
Mysterious host.
Check.
Or not.
Unlike the characters in the Christie mystery who’d been left in the dark about the reason they were invited to Soldier Island, the nuns knew exactly what they were doing when they came to South Bass. And they knew who they were supposed to be meeting here.
“Richard Ward Parker,” I mumbled the name at the same time I thought about how in the book (and the movie), the mysterious host never appears. Instead, he leaves a recording that welcomes his guests.
A message.
Just like the one Richard Ward Parker had left on Sister Liliosa’s voicemail.
The thought sent a tingle along my spine and I sat up so fast, those bunnies on my feet twitched. I positioned my tablet so I could more easily type on it, and the words I entered should come as no surprise.
Richard Ward Parker.
There were thousands of entries, but it seemed best to start with Parker’s own website. I was met with a picture of a man with salt-and-pepper hair; a wide, friendly smile; and eyes the color of a South Bass summer sky. There was a short bio of Parker and a message from him that made even me—not religious in any strict sense of the word—feel all warm and fuzzy inside and infused with the promise of a better world.
There was also a tab that linked to his public appearances and, curious, I clicked on it and looked over his schedule.
Seattle just about a year ago.
Portland after that.
No mention of South Bass or Water’s Edge or a retreat for nuns.
But then, when I clicked on Parker’s blog tab, I could see why.
The page opened on a picture of Richard Ward Parker standing on a wide windswept plain. There were craggy, snowcapped mountains in the distance and a dome of sky above his head that was achingly blue and seemed to go on forever.
The blog had been posted that very day, and my heart suddenly beating double time, I scanned through it and scrolled down to check previous posts.
“Son of a gun,” I whispered.
No wonder Richard Ward Parker had never made it to Water’s Edge for the retreat.
He’d been on his own retreat for the last four months.
At a monastery in Tibet.
* * *
“Well, how could he be here on South Bass when he’s in . . .” Doing her best to get the facts straight, Chandra shook her head. “He’s in wherever it is he’s in,” she grumbled, looking down into the teacup she’d brought over to my front porch with her the next morning. I wasn’t sure what kind of tea was in that cup of hers, I only knew that it was green and it smelled like a combination of fish and peanut butter.
When the next spring breeze whistled by, I made sure to lean back on the wicker couch so the scent of the tea zipped past me.
“He’s in Tibet, that’s where he is,” I reminded Chandra. While I was at it, I grabbed my own coffee cup from the table in front of the couch and wrapped my fingers around it, enjoying the sensation of the heat against my skin.
“And you see what it means, don’t you?” I was sure Luella’s question was aimed at Chandra so I kept my mouth shut.
“If he’s there,” Kate pointed out, “he couldn’t be here.”
“Well, he’s not here.” Chandra was so proud of her reasoning, she smiled radiantly. “So it all makes sense.”
It didn’t. Not in Chandra’s reality, and certainly not in mine.
I hauled in a breath, the better to try to explain so that she’d understand. “In that voicemail message, he said he’d checked out Water’s Edge early this year. But he was already in Tibet, so he couldn’t have. And he’s still in Tibet,” I told her, then before she could say what I knew she was going to say, I added, “And yes, he could have made the call from there, but that still doesn’t explain everything. Richard Ward Parker had this trip to Tibet scheduled for a year. He’s been living on some mountain for the last few months.”
Chandra is not a stupid woman, but she is not as practical as some, and certainly not as down-to-earth as most. Like so many people with her airy-fairy outlook on life, she accepts people for what they are, and she assumes they’re as open and up-front about their lives and their feelings as she always is about hers. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just that sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to be a little more hard-nosed. In Chandra’s case that hardly ever happens, and it can sometimes take her far too long to come to grips with the fact that what she sees isn’t always what she gets.
Her golden brows dropped low over her eyes. “So you’re saying he didn’t make that phone call? Someone else did?”
I was grateful I’d made that much of an inroad to her thinking, but I had to admit, “I can’t prove it, not without listening to that voicemail Sister Liliosa received again so I could compare the voices closely, but I listened to a short inspirational message on Richard Ward Parker’s website and I’d bet money that wasn’t his voice we heard on the phone.”
Inside at the breakfast table, my guests had just finished eating shirred eggs, fresh fruit, and thick, delicious pieces of oatmeal honey bread. Over at Water’s Edge, the nuns’ breakfast included the same bread and fruit along with slices of ham and, since Meg volunteered to go over there and oversee the cooking, poached eggs. Out on my front porch, I had served my friends bits and pieces of everything that was left over. Kate and I had bowls of fruit in front of us. Chandra had just finished a piece of bread smeared with apricot jam and she licked bits of jam from her fingers. There was only one ramekin of shirred eggs left, and we’d all agreed Luella should have it since she had to work all day. When she left my house, she’d head to the marina and from there, out on the lake with a group of early spring fishermen.
Kate filled her spoon with strawberries and spoke before she popped them into her mouth. “So somebody else made the call.”
Kate is never dense, but really, I could understand why she didn’t catch on to what I was getting at. Even after having all night to think about it, I still thought my theory was a little bizarre. “Yes, somebody else made the call,” I agreed. “But I’m saying there’s more to this whole thing than that. I’m saying that I think Richard Ward Parker never had anything to do with any of this. Not the message, and certainly not the retreat.”
Kate swallowed hard. “You mean—”
“Why would a man of his stature promise a retreat if he knew he wasn’t going to deliver?” I asked my friends. “And why would he say he’d been to Water’s Edge when he couldn’t have been? He obviously never could have been planning to come here if he knew he was going to be in Tibet. Think about it. It makes no sense. The only thing that does . . .” Like I said, I’d had all night to get used to the idea. Still, I needed to take a deep breath to steady myself before I dared put the rest of what I thought into words.
“I think Richard Ward Parker was the bait,” I said.
Bait was something Luella understood. She nodded. “You mean to get the nuns to come to South Bass.”
My turn to nod. “Let’s face it, being offered a week away from work is pretty flattering and pretty tempting for anybody. But these are not ladies who are used to shirking their duties. They wouldn’t just fly in from all around the country for a week o
f fun and laughter. There needed to be some incentive. And from what I read about him online last night, Richard Ward Parker is about as big an incentive as there can be. He’s a real mover and shaker in the world of spirituality and religion, a real inspiration, admired across denominational lines. Of course when they saw that he was involved—”
“They’d be dying to get here.” Listening to her own words, Kate cringed. “You know what I mean.”
I did.
“Another bad pun,” I admitted, “but I have no doubt it was an answer to these nuns’ prayers. An entire week with the man was an offer too good to refuse.”
“So somebody was trying to make sure the nuns showed up here.” Luella drummed her fingers against the rim of her ramekin. “And this someone pretended to be this Parker fellow, invited them all here, then said he couldn’t make it but they should stay. Why?”
“Well, it’s obvious why he left them the message that said he couldn’t make it,” I said. “Since Parker’s in Tibet, the person who was pretending to be him had to have some kind of cover for why he wasn’t here. As for the rest of it . . .”
Yes, I’d had hours to think about it.
Yes, I’d been over it a couple thousand times.
And yes, every time I worked through the problem, I did end up back where I’d started.
That didn’t mean I was any more comfortable with the information I knew I had to share with my friends.
I shivered. “If you believe Marianne and her librarian friends, the reason the mystery person wanted the nuns all together is so he can kill them all.”
I hadn’t expected anything but openmouthed gasps so I wasn’t surprised when I got them. I explained about And Then There Were None. I also explained why I wasn’t exactly on board with the theory.
“Only one nun has been killed and it’s already Wednesday, so really, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” I assured them in a voice that sounded confident enough but didn’t exactly convince me. Or the tiny tingle of apprehension that snaked through my bloodstream.
