The Men of Thorne Island

by Cynthia Thomason

  Sara jumped at the familiar voice coming from the back porch. How did he always manage to surprise her?

  “Probably not replacing the eaves,” he continued. “If I got a splinter, I’d have to put up with Mother Dexter and that sewing needle he uses to dig them out.”

  Sara stood and walked to the screen door. She stared at the back of Nick’s head. The baseball cap was on backward, and she smiled at the team’s grinning trademark face. “I don’t think you’ll be good at much of anything, Bass,” she said. “I’ll just let you putter around so you’ll feel like one of the boys.”

  “What about painting?” he said, still looking out at the yard.

  “Takes too much patience. You don’t have any.”

  “Electrical?”

  “Have you ever smelled charred skin? It’s not pleasant.”

  He turned slowly, meeting her gaze with a serious narrowing of his eyes. “You know what I’m especially good at, Sara?”

  Yes, she did, but now wasn’t the time to bring it up. “No. What’s that?”

  “Thinking.”

  “Thinking?”

  “You know, problem solving. I like to tackle problems before they get a toehold. Anticipate the roadblocks and head them off.”

  Sara knew this conversation was leading her somewhere as surely as if he’d snapped a leash around her neck. She decided to play along. “What problems do you think we might have?” she asked, taking a sip of coffee.

  He stood up and faced her through the screen door. “The first one is the transportation of materials. You’ve got a boatload of supplies coming from the mainland, right? Paint, paste, nails, tools, lumber, wire…”

  “Everything but qualified help,” she said.

  He ignored the gibe. “Have you thought about how you’re going to move these materials from the dock to the inn?”

  She knew exactly where he was going. “Of course I have,” she answered. “Why do you think I brought the car back? It’ll take a few trips, but I can get everything here in the bee. I’ll load up the trunk and the back seat…”

  The muscles in his face tensed with impatience the longer she talked. Finally he cut her off midsentence. “Let me drive it, Sara.”

  She pretended not to have heard. “What? What’s that?”

  “I want to drive the damn car, Sara.”

  With the exception of one other activity she could think of, this was probably the most fun she’d had with Nick since the day she met him. “I’ll have to think about it, Bass. You’ve been on this island for so long I don’t know if you even have a valid driver’s license.”

  His eyebrows drew together in an obstinate scowl. “I promise to avoid the cops.”

  “Well, I might consider it…on one condition.”

  His enthusiasm deflated like a week-old party balloon. “What’s that?”

  “I want information. And I’ll trade you these—” she pulled the car keys out of her pocket and dangled them in front of the screen door “—for it.”

  “Heck, that’s easy,” he said. “I’ve already told you a little about the island’s history. And about the Kraus family and their wine making. What else do you want to know?”

  “I don’t want that kind of info, Bass.”

  “Then what?”

  She opened the door and waved him inside. Making him wait, she refilled her coffee mug, sat down at the table and said, “Tell me about Ryan. Why is he here? And why is he so timid at the prospect of being around other people?”

  “Aw, come on, Sara, I can’t talk about him. It’s privileged information.”

  “Strictest confidence, Bass, I promise.” She meant it, and knew he’d believe her.

  “Still…”

  She jangled the keys one time and then clamped her fist around them. “No story. No keys.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, then back down at her. She could tell the end was beginning to justify the means. “Why Ryan?” he asked. “Why not one of the others?”

  “Because I’ve sort of got the others figured out. Brody’s story is obvious. He’s here because nobody else will have him. And you other three are just weird enough to overlook his faults and maybe even envy him for them.”

  Nick rolled his eyes.

  “And Dexter—he’s sweet-natured all right. Just like you told me. But he’s ticked off that the rest of the world is still playing football and he isn’t. So he’s hiding out with a remote control in one hand and a physical therapy manual in the other. Your recovery has become his mission.”

  “What about me? Why don’t you ask about me?”

  “Primarily because you wouldn’t tell me anything if I did. I know you came here after somebody shot you. Maybe it was a jealous husband. Maybe it was the clerk in the convenience store you were robbing. I don’t know. But that happened six years ago, and now you’re just sitting around here waiting for the bullet to come out the other side.”

  He grimaced as if she’d delivered a painful shot of her own. “Sara, some people are just private.”

  “Fine. So I’ll leave you alone—for now. But I want to know about Ryan. I like him. I won’t use the information against him, and I won’t try to change him. I just want to understand.”

  Nick studied her face for several moments. He must have decided that he could trust her, because he finally said, “Okay, here’s what happened to Ryan.”

  FROM THE BEGINNING Nick’s story hinted of misplaced trust and unforgivable betrayal. Eliot Ryan had loved racehorses and the thrill of seeing them run. According to Nick, Ryan had been one hell of a jockey. But he’d become a victim of some double-dealing and had been sentenced to jail. And it was this image—Ryan sitting in a cell—that almost brought Sara to tears.

  “He suspected one of the trainers he worked for was injecting his horses with a stimulant,” Nick explained. “When he called the guy on it, he was told to mind his own business or he wouldn’t get a mount in all of Ohio.”

  “So he kept quiet,” Sara deduced.

  “Yeah, he did. It happened at a time in his life when his mother was on her deathbed and Ryan was paying some heavy-duty medical bills. His silence bought him a ton of good races and cuts of hefty prize money. But when the story finally broke and the racing commission got wind of the drug use, that same silence cast a whole lot of suspicion on him.”

  “Is that why he went to jail? For not revealing what he suspected?”

  “Nope. He wasn’t arrested then. There wasn’t enough solid evidence.”

  “So what happened?” Sara asked.

  Nick rubbed the stubble of beard on his chin. “There’s a little device that track people know about called the machine.”

  Machine? A harmless enough name, Sara thought. “What is it?”

  “It’s a small, battery-powered prod that fits into the palm of a man’s hand. About the size and shape of a Bic lighter. And it’s highly illegal. With pressure from his thumb, the jockey can turn the device on. Then while he’s riding, he can touch the horse anywhere on its body and send a jolt of electricity through that thick horse hide that’s strong enough to make the animal run faster.”

  Sara couldn’t imagine Ryan using the machine on any animal. “Did Ryan use the device in one of his races?”

  Nick looked at Sara with honest, clear eyes. “I’d bet my entire next month’s rent that he didn’t.”

  Sara didn’t smile at his attempt to lighten the mood.

  “Ryan was framed,” he continued, “plain and simple. He won a big race one day, and the jockey who came in second issued a protest, saying he saw Ryan use the machine. The stewards investigated, ran the film dozens of times and finally found a frame that showed Ryan might have been using his hand in a way that might have indicated the use of a machine. Then the stewards found one of the devices in the dirt—obviously planted. The authorities were called in, there was a short trial, and Ryan didn’t see daylight for the next eighteen months. And of course his career was over.”

  “How did
he end up here?” Sara asked.

  “Brody used to go to the track a lot before he moved to the island. He knew Ryan, and when he heard about his release from prison, he invited him to Thorne. With his mother buried by then, the poor guy had nowhere else to go.”

  Now he acts as if he’s afraid of his own shadow, Sara thought. And he’s definitely more anxious than the others at the thought of strangers coming to the island. “If you ask me—” she began.

  Nick put his hand up. “Stop right there, little mother. I didn’t tell you this so you’d start conjuring up some scheme to fix Ryan.”

  She leveled her most frustrated glare on him. “No, you told me so you could drive my car. That’s a much more noble reason!”

  He stuck his hand out, palm up. “That’s right, so hand over the keys. A deal’s a deal.”

  Sara wanted to ask more questions, but Dexter’s voice boomed from the front porch. “Nick! Sara! Come on. That pontoon boat’s coming into the dock, and it’s carrying quite a load.”

  Nick waggled his fingers, his gaze fixed on the keys in Sara’s hand. “Remember what you said, Crawford,” he warned. “I think your exact words were ‘strictest confidence. I won’t try to change him.’ Does that ring a bell?”

  Reluctantly she slid the key ring across the table. “Yes. I won’t say anything.”

  He picked up the keys and started out of the kitchen. He was almost through the door when he whirled around to face her. “That doesn’t mean you won’t do anything, though, does it?”

  She answered with a noncommittal grin.

  LATER THAT FRIDAY improvements were well under way at the Cozy Cove. By the time he quit for the day, Dexter had painted two bedrooms a cheerful shade of lemon. They only needed floral wallpaper borders around the ceiling moldings and chair rails to complete the decor. Ryan had ripped down old gutters and downspouts to reach damaged fascia boards. Brody had removed outlet covers, cut off the power supply and tested wiring with a strange instrument he carried from room to room. Sara, who knew nothing about electrical work, couldn’t gauge his progress, but each time she passed the doorway of a room he was working in, she heard grumbling and complaining.

  “Don’t know why I’m bothering with this nonsense,” he said. “If I have my way, there won’t be any people coming to this old inn, anyway. I’m just wasting good fishing time, and for what?”

  Sara hadn’t seen much of Nick that day, but she determined that he’d had more fun than his companions. The little engine of the Volkswagen had puttered under her window countless times, indicating that Nick probably made twice as many trips as were necessary. And since he never came from the same direction two times in a row, he’d obviously found circuitous routes from the inn to the harbor.

  “Way to squeeze six years of driving into one day, Bass,” she called out the window during one of his stops. “Remember, when that tank of gasoline is gone, somebody’s got to talk Winkie into bringing more from Put-in-Bay—at a cost of twenty bucks!”

  The wide grin on his face confirmed that he was having the time of his life. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Crawford,” he hollered back to her. “Your credit’s good with Winkie.”

  When all the supplies were eventually deposited at the inn, Sara heard Nick’s feet clomping around on the roof and his hammer pounding away at the shingles.

  For the next few days Sara decided her best course of action was to stay as far away from the renovations as possible. She split her time between working in the vineyard, giving instructions to Candy on the cell phone and preparing monthly statements and flow sheets on her computer.

  It was during these hours of isolation that Sara realized she missed being intimately involved in the refurbishing. She stayed away from the men, but the desire to check on every little detail and the need to celebrate even the smallest improvement was almost overwhelming. The more she stared at numbers on a blue computer screen, the more she wished she was painting and preparing the Cozy Cove.

  Sara, who’d always prided herself on her levelheaded approach to problems and logical thinking, was now facing a life-altering realization. A big part of her didn’t care about the numbers at all. Instead, she rejoiced in watching the old inn come alive. Suddenly Sara Crawford, number cruncher, had become an artistic visionary!

  Another discovery she made about herself, and this one was more surprising, was that she actually missed being around the men. Tucked away in her room with only her laptop to keep her company, she listened to their complaints and winced at language that would have been much more appropriate at the Happy Angler. But occasionally she heard a cheerful whistle, a shared laugh or the country twang of Waylon Jennings coming from Nick’s turntable, and she knew that deep down she wanted to be part of the community she had inherited.

  That was why late the following Saturday afternoon, Sara called Winkleman on her cell phone and made a special request. Since she always read every food label and calculated each gram of fat in her diet, she couldn’t believe it was her voice listing the groceries she required.

  “Two whole cut-up fryers. A one-pound can of vegetable oil. A large tub of margarine. A pound of cheddar cheese. A bag of flour, and a five-pound bag of potatoes…” By the time she mentioned fresh asparagus and crescent rolls, she could tell Winkleman’s mouth was watering.

  “Lordy, Sara,” he said, “sounds like you’ll have enough for a small army.”

  She smiled into the phone. “If you’re fishing for an invitation, Mr. Winkleman, you’ve got it. Just have the groceries here tomorrow by two o’clock. And you’d better bring a large package of napkins.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And, Winkie,” she added, “don’t tell the others. I want this to be a surprise.”

  After hanging up, Sara went into the kitchen to double-check the equipment. Luckily she’d purchased all the necessary utensils on the mainland, including oversize skillets and a large pot for boiling potatoes. She mentally went through the list she’d given Winkie and realized she’d forgotten to mention butter for the rolls.

  “No problem,” she said to herself. “Surely Brody has butter he can sell me.”

  She left the inn and walked the short distance to Brody’s commissary. When she reached the steps of the cottage, she heard his voice coming from inside. His tone was brisk and authoritarian, almost intimidating, and she stopped before going inside. If Brody was angry about something, she didn’t want to be in the path of his tirade. She waited outside but gave in to the temptation to eavesdrop.

  “Don’t give me any of that horse manure about not being able to deliver,” he said. “I know darn well you can.”

  Sara didn’t hear an answering voice and assumed Brody was talking on his phone.

  “Hire a boat if you have to,” he said. “You’ll get your money. I want three hundred feet of your best-grade conduit delivered to Thorne Island as soon as possible. And while you’re at it, send me eight new ceiling fans. But don’t try to pass off those junky nineteen-ninety-nine specials on me. I want them to be quiet. If one of them even so much as purrs like a cat, I’ll have it back in that store before you even know it left.”

  Brody added other items to his list, including heavy-gauge wire, fuses and some materials Sara had never heard of. Her dwindling bank balance swam before her eyes. What in the world was Brody doing? She couldn’t afford to pay for all that. If this was Brody’s way of getting rid of her, it might just work.

  She bounded up the steps, prepared to confront him. But another sharp retort from Brody stopped her.

  “What do you mean, how am I going to pay for all this? Young man, do you have any idea who I am?”

  There was a silence during which Sara could practically feel the air crackling around her, and the nervousness of the employee on the other end of that phone.

  “Listen to me,” Brody commanded. “As soon as we’re done with this conversation, you call Vernon Russell, the president of the main branch of First Union Trust Bank of Cleveland. Tell
him that Carlton Brody just placed an order at your store and wants him to send payment in full.”

  Another pause. “No, I don’t have his damn number. What do I sound like, a telephone operator? Why don’t you earn that big salary of yours and look it up! And I expect to see that order here lickety split!”

  Since it was impossible to slam a cell phone with the same vigor one could propel a regular phone to its cradle, Brody must have compensated by pounding his fist on the countertop. Anyway, the loud crack that followed the end of the conversation was proof to Sara that Brody expected his demands to be met.

  She turned away from the door. Suddenly aware that she hadn’t drawn a normal breath in minutes, she expelled a long whistle of air. Brody’s conversation played over in her mind. The man had actually arranged to pay for improvements to the inn!

  “Unbelievable!” she said to herself. Like a snake that had just rolled over in the grass, the old grouch had revealed a soft spot.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Sara spun around to stare into Brody’s squinting dark eyes. Standing in his doorway, he might have frightened the wits out of her at one time, but not this evening. It was all she could do not to grin.

  “How long have you been standing there?” he demanded.

  “Ah…not long. A few minutes.”

  “Long enough to hear a private telephone conversation, I’ll warrant.”

  She shrugged innocently. “Maybe a little of it.”

  “Just like a sneaky female. Don’t read anything into it. I just can’t abide shoddy work. And that two-bit junk you ordered wouldn’t bring a damn doorbell up to code.”

  “I didn’t realize,” she offered weakly. “Brody, I want you to know I appreciate—”

  “Never mind that,” he said. “Nothing’s changed. I still don’t want a bunch of beachcombers swarming over my island.”

  “I know,” she said. “I understand your position.”

  “Good, ’cause I stand firm on it. A little fancy wiring shouldn’t put any ideas into your head. Now, what are you doing here, anyway?”