“What is it she wants?”
He told her about the will and about Dino.
“But any relationship between Clare and Dino was over long ago,” she said.
“Clare doesn’t seem to think so.”
“And how could she know about my father’s will?”
“I gather she had a brief affair with one of the attorneys who drew it up.”
“Oh that’s fantastic.”
“Is it? Don’t underestimate her. When she turns on the heat your cousin Clare could seduce an angel. Delilah wasn’t in the same league with our dear Mrs. Loomis.”
She looked around her at the limitless expanse of sea and said, “All right. I believe you. What happens now?”
“I have a proposition for you.”
Her courage had returned. She said contemptuously, “I suppose you want me to beat Clare’s price, is that it? All right, Mr. Robinson. How much is my life worth? I don’t know what the going price is on kidnapping.”
“You’re not kidnapped and I don’t want a dime from you.”
“Isn’t my money as good as Clare’s?”
“Look, I’m working a con game with Clare. I’m planning to cheat her and I haven’t a scruple in the world about it because I don’t mind cheating a psychopathic bitch who cold-bloodedly planned a murder for profit. And apart from that, if she gets her comeuppance this time she’ll be finished. She’ll never have the guts or the money to try it again. Particularly after she knows that you know. So just climb down off your high horse and listen to me carefully and then when I’m finished if you want me to take you back I will. All right?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course you have a choice. I’ll head straight back now if you say so.”
She smiled for the first time since he had begun to talk and said, “I believe you would.”
“Then you’re willing to listen?”
“I’m willing to listen.”
“To begin with I’m sorry I frightened you. But I had to do it that way in order to let you know that I’m absolutely serious. If I’d just sort of mentioned casually that your cousin Clare had hired me to drown you but that I’d figured out a way to outsmart her, you know how far we’d have gotten, Clare is a pretty shrewd cookie but in her hurry to get the job done she made two mistakes. First, she picked the wrong guy. And second, because she has no interest in the water, she never bothered to study a chart of the area surrounding Spanish Cay. Anyway, as the situation now stands I can’t collect the rest of the money until I’ve satisfied Clare that you’re dead. And short of her being there to see it with her own eyes there’s no way I can do that except to take you out to sea and dump you. Clare knows I’m with you now. She had a pair of binoculars trained on us from her terrace this morning.”
“I saw her,” Gwen said. “I wondered what could possibly have gotten her up so early.”
“That’s what got her up all right, her hurry to see you dead. She’ll be looking for me again tonight when I come back without you.”
Gwen gazed around her at the open sea and said, “I don’t understand. Do you really mean to go through with it after all, after everything you said?”
“Of course not.” He pointed ahead of the boat and said, “Look. Look out there. Do you see anything?”
“Just an awful lot of water.”
“Well look again. Over there to the northeast. Do you see something white?”
“It looks like surf.”
“It is, and it’s rolling up onto a spit of sand, a reef that just barely projects above the surface of the water. It’s so small that the average person would never know anything about it unless he’d had occasion to study the charts very carefully. For that matter some of the older charts don’t even show it. I happen to know about it because I knew I would be coming through here at night in Charee and I wanted to make damn sure of what was ahead of me. As soon as she made this proposition to me—that I take you sailing and knock you on the head and dump you overboard—I remembered this reef and realized how I could use it.”
“You’re planning to put me ashore there?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough to collect the money, fly to Miami, buy a boat and come back for you.”
“But that might take days.”
“Only four. A day for me to get to Miami and buy the boat. Another day to put her in shape for sea and two more days to get back to you. What do you say?”
“Just how badly do you need that money?”
“In the worst way, or I wouldn’t be messing around with this lunacy at all. I’ve got to buy another boat and so far as I can see this is the only chance I’ll ever have to put that many dollars together in the same place at the same time.”
“And you won’t consider taking the money from me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“We could call it a loan.”
“Call it what you like, we’d both still know what it was for. You’d be buying your life back from me. I’m not in the business of selling lives.”
“So you’d rather steal it from Clare.”
“Yes.”
“Good for you,” she said laughing. “I think I like you, Mr. Robinson.”
“Does that mean you’ll go along with the idea?”
“I don’t know yet. Don’t rush me. Look, why do you have to maroon me in the middle of the ocean? Why can’t you just take me back to Spanish Cay and I’ll promise to stay out of sight until you get away?”
He shook his head. “I thought of that but it wouldn’t work. Spanish Cay is too small and there are too many people on it. Somebody would be sure to spot you.”
“But if she’s waiting to give you the money as soon as you come back what difference would it make if she found out the truth after you were gone?”
“She’d never let me get away with it. The chances are she’d claim I held her up and stole the money. I’d be stopped here or in Miami.”
“She could still do that even after you have your boat.”
“It’s not very likely. That would mean a wait of at least four days before reporting the theft and it wouldn’t take a J. Edgar Hoover to know something was fishy with that. Once I have the boat it will be too late for her to do anything about it. What do you say, Gwen? Will you give it a whirl?”
“I’m not promising anything but I’ll at least take a look at your desert island.” He was, she realized, a disarmingly honest sort of pirate. He could just as easily have dumped her there by force if he had been so minded.
Thirty minutes later they were able to make out the thin white line of sand above the surf. When she saw how tiny it was her resolution began to fail.
Robinson looked at her and said, “Getting cold feet?”
“A little.”
“I warned you it wasn’t much.”
“Maybe it looks bigger when you’re ashore,” she said hopefully.
Robinson let the Lightning slide up on the beach on the leeward side of the reef and drew the skiff up after it. He dropped the sail and dug the Lightning’s anchor deep into the sand to hold her. Gwen stepped out and began to walk curiously along the thin strip of fine sand. When she returned he was unloading the skiff.
“This is a five-gallon can of water,” he said. “As long as you don’t decide to take a shower in it it will last a long time. And here’s mosquito repellent, a flashlight, reading matter and an assortment of the finest imported foods recommended by Gourmet magazine for well stocked castaways.”
“Chop suey. Ugh!”
“We also have beans and Spam. You couldn’t do better at the Waldorf.”
“What’s this?” she asked holding up a package sealed in heavy Pliofilm.
“Those are flares.”
“What are they for?”
“Just in case you get too unhappy about the whole thing. There are always yachts working down through Hog Island Channel, about five miles to the north. You can watch for t
heir running lights at night and then shoot off a distress flare.”
“I guess that would mean answering an awful lot of questions, wouldn’t it?”
“I guess it would.”
“And then, of course, the whole business about Clare having hired you would come out. I wouldn’t want that. I wouldn’t want my dad to know about it.”
“Your dad will know about it anyway.”
“Why?”
“You’ve got to tell him about it in order to make him change that will. As long as Clare stands to profit in any way by your death you won’t be safe.”
“I guess you’re right. What about Dino?”
“What about him?”
“He’ll be terribly worried.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t know that there’s anything I can do about it,” Robinson said.
“Couldn’t you tell him the truth?”
“Absolutely not. He’s entirely too chummy with Clare. It would only take one word to blow the whole thing out into the open and make the biggest scandal that ever hit Spanish Cay.”
“But I can’t have him thinking I’m dead.”
“Don’t you realize how close you came to being dead. This isn’t kid stuff, Gwen. Your cousin Clare means business.”
“But there’s got to be some other way.”
“There is no other way.”
“Poor Dino.”
Robinson did not say anything. He suspected that poor Dino would be well taken care of.
“How do you know you’ll be back in four days, Gus?”
“Because I’ve told you I would be.”
“But you know yourself that anything can happen on the water.”
“Then you use the flares or hoist your undies upside down. Someone will pick you up. There’s plenty of traffic in the general area; it’s just that no one comes over here to the reef unless there’s a special reason. But I tell you what I will do. If for any reason I’m more than twenty-four hours late I’ll radio ahead to Spanish Cay and tell them to pick you up. However, there’s still one serious loophole in the whole thing, one that I haven’t been able to lick.”
“What is it, Gus?”
“When you’re reported missing they’ll notify your father. I don’t want to be responsible for throwing that kind of a scare into him.”
“Poor Gus. Have you been racking your brain over that?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sweet.”
“I’ve been called everything but that. And it wasn’t so long ago that you were convinced I was a murderer.”
“A sweet murderer. But you don’t have to worry about Dad. He’s out of the country. He’s staying at a sanatorium in Switzerland. If they contact anyone it would be his attorney in New York.”
“Is that the one who was involved with Clare?”
“No, this is Jess Holland, a very respectable married man. But he knows Clare and I know he doesn’t like her. I think if you told him the whole story he’d believe you.”
“All right. I’ll call him from Miami.”
“What happens if I get a burst appendix?”
“Are you apt to?”
“I never have.”
“Then I suggest you forget it. But if you do get sick, use the flares. Look, you can even see Spanish Cay from here although they can’t see you.”
She could barely make out a dim bulge on the horizon and above it the fretwork of pine tops and the tip of the radio tower. It was faintly reassuring.
Robinson began setting up her camp. He found a few scraggly lengths of driftwood and rigged the tarp over them as a shelter. He then attached stakes to four short lengths of line and drove them deep into the sand to hold the tarp in place. All her supplies were placed on a blanket under the tarp. When he had finished, rivulets of sweat were running down his neck. He wiped his brow and said, “What about a swim?”
“No, I think I’d rather go to an air-conditioned movie.”
“Wait four days and I’ll buy you a lifetime pass to the neighborhood drive-in.”
He stripped down to his trunks and dove into the clear green water. He swam out with slow powerful strokes and then rested on his back. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he called back to her.
She had been watching him thoughtfully. Her dark eyes seemed larger than ever in her small heart-shaped face. Slowly she unbuttoned her shirt and drew off her slacks. She stood there looking very small but beautifully formed in her lacy bra and panties. Her limbs were almost perfectly round and smoothly tanned. Robinson turned over and looked at her and his heart seemed to stand still. He thought he had never seen a human body quite so magnificently shaped. She reminded him of a dark-haired Javanese dancing girl he had once loved. The Javanese girl had possessed the same intriguing combination of childlike innocence and adult sensuality.
If Gwen was embarrassed by her near nudity she did not show it. She walked down to the water’s edge and put one toe in. September Morn, thought Robinson sourly. That damned pimp Dino has taught her well. He turned over and dove beneath the surface and held his breath until he began to hear bells. When he finally came up he found her floating nearby.
“It’s wonderful, Gus.”
“That’s right,” he said trying not to look too hard at her firm young breasts which were clearly revealed by the wet bra.
She laughed at him and said, “This isn’t doing much good, is it?” and reached behind her and unsnapped the hook and tossed the useless bit of silk up onto the sand. Her creamy breasts with their delicate pink nipples hardened by contact with the water jutted above the surface as she floated. Robinson did not think he could take much more. He turned over and dove again. He was close to her and he could clearly see her tanned thighs and white panties, her tiny waist and the darker triangle beneath the wet silk.
She was teasing him. It must run in the family. Damn all high-priced international whores anyway. Dino’s words came back to him. “It is amazing with these shy little American girls. So carefully brought up. So proper. And when you turn them loose—bang! They can’t seem to get enough.” Well to hell with her. She was Dino’s and he could have her. He swam to the beach and lay down on his belly with his eyes closed. When she came out of the water he did not turn to look at her.
Gwen went back to the tarp and shucked off her wet panties and pulled on her slacks and shirt. When she was dressed she walked back to the Lightning and got out a wicker basket that had been lying under the stern thwart. She walked back to Robinson with it and asked softly, “Asleep?”
“No,” he answered in a surly voice.
“Care for some champagne?”
“Why not? And a shrimp cocktail and filet mignon while you’re at it. Not too well done please.”
The cork made an unmistakable pop. He opened his eyes and sat up. She was holding a beautifully iced bottle of champagne. Putting the bottle down beside him she reached into the insulated ice compartment in the basket and drew out two chilled, narrow stemmed glasses.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Robinson said. “Do you always travel this way?”
“I didn’t know I was going to be murdered today but I did think I was going on a sailing party, so I came prepared.” She filled a glass and gave it to him, then filled her own and raised the rim to the level of her eyes and said, “To my assassin.”
“To the victim.”
The wine was superb. It was impossible to remain angry with her. To hell with Dino. Her hair was still wet and a drop of water glistened on her brown cheek. If she was a tart she was the most charming one he had ever imagined.
“I don’t think the noonday sun is the best thing for champagne,” she said. “Won’t you step into my parlor?”
They walked back and sat on the blanket in the shade of the tarp. “I might even have some more goodies in this magic basket,” she said. “We have a fair selection of hors d’ oeuvres. Also ham and cheese sandwiches. What would you like?”
“And ruin the effect of good champag
ne? Let’s worry about the food later.”
The world had settled into a golden glow of light and shade and cool breeze and the murmur of surf on the beach. When he had imagined roaming the islands with Gwen it had been much like this. He reached across and kissed her softly on the cheek. She turned and put her mouth against his. Her lips tasted faintly of sun and salt.
“Gus,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I think I love you.”
“That’s some champagne.”
“I mean it.”
“Are you sure you’re not just thanking me for having refrained from clouting you on the head and kicking you overboard?”
“Do you want to know what I love about you?”
“Yes.”
“I love the way you look and the way you taste and the way you talk and the way you don’t really give a damn for the rest of the world. And I think I’m still a little afraid of you and maybe I love that too.”
“We could have a lot of fun together.”
“I know, darling.”
She lay in his arms with her back against his shoulder and her head resting beneath his chin. Looking down he could not see her eyes but only her long delicate lashes. There are so many places I would like to show you, he wanted to say. Islands and sunsets and great purple seas without end. Mangareva and the Tuamotus and Papeete and God knows what else. Come with me, he wanted to say, it can be a better life than either of us have ever known.
He bent down and kissed her still damp hair.
“Touch me,” she whispered up at him.
He put his big brown hand under her shirt on her warm belly. A shiver of excitement rippled her flesh. His hand moved up and cupped her naked breast and he felt the small nipple rigid against his palm. There seemed to be a roaring in his ears. Was it the wind or the champagne or the intoxication of so much beauty? He was aware that she had reached down and unzipped the slacks and rolled them down over her softly rounded hips.
She buried her face against his chest and murmured, “Gus, darling.”
Her little brown fingers were everywhere. She was endlessly curious and provocative. With unspoken consent she arranged her body for him.
He bent over her. She cried out in pain. Astonished, he drew back.
Virgin Cay Page 9
