Dead Asleep

by Jamie Freveletti

  Emma smiled at him. He smiled back, threw the car into first and hit the gas. The wheels spun a bit on the dry ground but grabbed quickly enough, and then his Jeep shot down the road at a breathtakingly fast speed. They reached Deadman’s Curve. Carrow took it at forty miles per hour. Way too fast, she thought as the Jeep tilted sharply to one side. She clutched the handle above the door and willed herself not to say anything. Despite his speed, Carrow handled the car with confidence as he wound around the side of the mountain. At the halfway point he took a switchback, downshifted again into second, and the Jeep began to crawl upward, its engine whining with the effort to climb the hill, which blocked the low lying mangrove swamp from the rest of the island.

  When they were at the top, Carrow’s house came into view. It was a series of structures, all one or two stories interconnected with pathways and open air courtyards. Emma knew from the other island residents that Carrow employed a staff of fifteen and that the house was almost always filled with celebrities and the glitterati of the music world. It was two days after New Year’s, and the entire island was full to the brim with rich, globe-trotting people anxious to play as hard as they could until driven back to their daily lives after New Year’s. Carrow screeched into the horseshoe drive and slammed on the brakes. He reached over and indicated the bottle.

  “May I?” he said.

  She handed it to him. “Sure.”

  He unscrewed the top and Emma watched him gulp down some more of the liquid. He offered it to her but she waved it off.

  Music echoed on the night air and a babble of voices came from behind the villa. The front of the house blazed with light thrown by two enormous lanterns placed on either side of a massive, carved wooden door. Carrow waited for her to climb out of the car and then got out himself and started toward the entrance, his right hand firmly clutching the bottle’s neck.

  A woman strolled out from next to the house, wearing only a white string bikini bottom with ties at each side and flip-flops. She was tall, emaciated, and had sharp-edged cheekbones and long honey-colored hair that reached the middle of her back. She carried an open whiskey bottle in one hand. Not the same brand that Carrow had, Emma noticed. She recognized the woman’s face but couldn’t place the name. She glanced at Carrow, but he seemed unconcerned at the woman’s topless state.

  “Hey, there you are,” the woman said. “We were just looking for you.” She peered at Emma. “Who’s that?”

  “Ms. Emma Caldridge, meet Britanni Warner.”

  The woman’s face lit up. “Oh, yeah, the botanist!”

  Carrow shook his head. “Chemist, isn’t it?” He directed his question at Emma.

  “Both, actually. I study plants for their use in cosmetic applications,” Emma said.

  “That’s right,” the woman said. “Cindy told me about her. Her lab makes the ‘Pure Colors’ makeup line that Cindy reps.” Emma realized then where she had seen Warner before. She was a famous model, and the face that represented a second line of makeup sold in high-end department stores. “Are you here for vacation?” Warner asked her.

  Emma shook her head. “Work. The company that you mentioned is the one paying for me to be here. I’m on the search for new botanicals.”

  “She’s staying on the East Hill at Blue Heron.”

  “I know it. Nice location,” Warner said.

  “The view is spectacular,” Emma said.

  “I’m taking her to Martin’s room.”

  Warner grimaced. “He’s still sleeping. I hope you can help him. I’ll be at the pool.” She nodded to them, and Emma listened to the sound of her flip-flops snapping away.

  Carrow waved her into the front door. The living room lights were set low. Wicker furniture and bamboo coffee tables sat on dark wooden floors. A bank of glass doors spanned the far wall, and through them Emma could see the outlines of a large infinity pool. At least thirty people lounged around it under the flames of citronella torches, while others in swimsuits floated on inner tubes. The whole scene appeared out of place, late as it was. She saw Warner walk to a lounge chair and pick up her swimsuit top. Music played, but not Rex Rain. Emma knew most of Carrow’s hits, and the current selection wasn’t one of them. The house was set high on the hill, and beyond the pool the ocean view would have been sweeping had it not been night. Now all she could see was the occasional wave as it undulated under the moonlight.

  “Is the whole house awake?” she asked.

  Carrow nodded. “After eighteen months on tour and playing gigs every night, we have become essentially nocturnal.”

  “Eighteen months is a long time.”

  He gave her a glance. “It will be two and a half years before we’re done. In that time I’ll have had all of four weeks off. These two and another two in March.”

  A woman in her mid-forties stepped in through the French doors that led to the pool area. She had black hair and wore a bathing suit with a sheer white tunic top over it and flip-flops decorated with rhinestones. Emma recognized her as Belinda Rory, a woman made famous by the cable show The Other Side. She claimed she could speak to the dead, among other things. Her arresting brown eyes passed over Emma in a focused assessment.

  “Is he awake?” Rory said to Carrow. He shrugged.

  “Dunno. Going there now.”

  “If you need me just let me know.” She nodded once at Emma and started across the living room to a swinging door on the opposite wall. When she pushed through it, Emma saw the front panel of a stainless steel refrigerator. The door closed behind her.

  “Wasn’t that the famous television medium?” Emma asked.

  Carrow nodded. “Martin invited her. He wanted to speak to Jimi Hendrix.”

  Emma raised her eyebrows. “And how did that go?”

  Carrow gave her an amused look. “Apparently he was otherwise occupied.” Emma suppressed her own smile. In her travels she’d seen many things that appeared unexplainable, and had learned not to dismiss too readily anything that was new or unusual. Still, she didn’t believe in mediums, or that they could speak to the dead.

  They entered a hallway and passed into a bedroom. This room, too, had glass doors where the wall should be and another breathtaking view of the ocean. Emma moved toward a large four-poster bed made of teak with a mosquito net pulled back on each side. A man lay there, sleeping. His eyes were closed and his face had a peaceful look. A sheet was pulled up to his chest.

  “He’s wearing clothes,” she said.

  “He was drinking right before.” Carrow pointed to a carafe on a nightstand that was filled with red wine. Next to it was a glass, and next to that a pile of powder. Emma stepped closer.

  “Is this it?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  Emma reached to a lamp on the nightstand and moved it closer, taking care not to disturb the powder. It was a dirty, beige color. “What’s his usual powder of choice?”

  “Not powder, pills. Roxy’s.”

  OxyContin. Emma wasn’t surprised. The prescription pill had taken over the drug world. What was on the nightstand wasn’t it, though, that was clear. OC was blue. The color was off.

  “He sometimes uses China White, so I initially thought this was just some cheap stuff he’d picked up on a nearby island on his way here, but that’s not heroin.” Emma didn’t want to ask Carrow how he could be so sure it wasn’t heroin, but she needed to know if he’d taken it himself. If he had and hadn’t fallen asleep, then perhaps the powder wasn’t the culprit.

  “Did you try it? Is that how you know it’s not?”

  Carrow shook his head. “I don’t do heroin, or Oxy, but I’ve seen plenty of both, and this isn’t it. Plus, Martin said he wasn’t going to do heroin anymore.”

  “He could have been lying.”

  Carrow grimaced. “Martin lies a lot, but I believed him when he said it.”

  Emma moved closer to the bed, and her toe hit something. She bent down to retrieve whatever it was and her hand closed on a dry shape that felt like wood. It was
the root of a plant, bent with two tendrils that twisted downward. She held it up to show Carrow. He leaned in to get a closer look.

  “Is it ginger root?”

  Emma turned it over, looking at it from all sides. She’d never actually seen the root. She didn’t think it was indigenous to the island, but it was easy to grow and required only abundant moisture and warm temperatures, both of which were plentiful in Terra Cay.

  “It’s mandrake.”

  “What’s mandrake?”

  “A plant that acts as a narcotic when ingested.” The root was the exact color of the pile of powder on the nightstand. “It looks as though he grated it into a powder and drank it. Probably with the wine.” Emma watched Carrow closely. She could see his expression harden.

  “What a fool that man is. If it’s a drug, Martin will take it. Will he come awake? Or do I need to get him to a clinic?”

  “It can be dangerous. When added to wine it will make the person ingesting it fall asleep and be insensible. The ancient civilizations used it as an anesthetic when stitching wounds, and it’s said that it was administered in Rome to those being crucified so they wouldn’t feel the pain. Gave some of the Roman soldiers a fright when the crucified were taken down because they’d come back to life. Where did he get his hands on this?”

  Carrow sighed. “I haven’t the slightest idea. It’s no secret that Martin spends most of his time drunk or high, but honestly he’s always taken drugs that are commercially available. I’ve never known him to make his own from a root. This is new.”

  Emma handed him the plant. “I don’t think mandrake is native to the island so you’d better look around your villa to see if he’s cultivating it somewhere.” Carrow took the root from her with a look of distaste.

  “We’re supposed to start recording in two days and I need him to be awake. If I find it I’ll be sure to yank it all out. His little drug garden will be gone.”

  “Be careful with that. The legends say that mandrake screams when you pull it from the ground and if you hear it you’ll die.”

  Carrow gave her an appalled look. “Screams? Are you serious?”

  “Some say that the ancients used to tie a rope to a dog’s tail and have the dog pull it out. They would blow a trumpet at the precise moment to muffle the scream.” Carrow leaned closer and his cologne wafted over her. She didn’t recognize the scent but it smelled delicious. She could see a glint of humor in his eyes.

  “I’ll be sure to rip it out during one of our recording sessions. Half the critics complain that we don’t make music at all. Just a tremendous amount of noise. Mandrake screams have nothing on Rex Rain.”

  Chapter 7

  Emma drove herself home in one of Carrow’s spare Jeeps. Carrow had decided to give it a little more time before he notified the island doctor. He’d offered to drive her back but she waved him off. He’d continued drinking steadily the entire time that she was with him and she didn’t want a repeat of the wild ride up the hill.

  Her house and grounds were filled with sounds, but good, natural ones rather than crashing glass and incoherent screams. Tree frogs sang their up-and-down tones and moths fluttered around the solar-powered lights that lined the driveway. The ocean waves made a rhythmic rumble as they washed against the beach below. She used her key and stepped into the cool foyer. The lights were low, the house quiet. Despite the apparent peacefulness, or maybe because of it, Emma retrieved her gun from the cabinet and made another quick circuit of the house before entering her bedroom. She grabbed her nightgown from a hook behind the bathroom door, dropped her clothes in the hamper, placed her gun within reach on the nightstand, and fell asleep in minutes.

  She woke the next morning when a bar of sunlight shot through the edge of the wooden shutters on the window and landed on her face. A quick glance at the clock told her it was almost nine, far later than her normal rising time of seven. The late night had taken its toll. She yawned, stretched, and headed to the armoire to get some clothes. She opened the panels.

  A human skull sat on the shelf.

  Emma swallowed the shriek of surprise at the sight of it. It stared back at her with its black hole eyes. It couldn’t have been placed there before she and Moore took their turn around the house, because she’d opened the armoire to get the gun. Somebody had entered after she left for Carrow’s. The idea that an unknown intruder had waited and watched made her skin crawl. She wondered if the priestess was the culprit.

  Emma kept her eyes on it while she opened a drawer beneath. She pulled out a pair of shorts and a top and dressed. She removed a pair of running socks and put them on her hands, took a deep breath and lifted the skull from the shelf. Holding it out in front of her, she walked with it through the hall and into the kitchen, where she placed it in the stainless steel sink. It looked authentic, but she knew that it likely was not. The sharp intake of breath behind her told her that Latisha Johnson, the cook, was back.

  Emma turned and saw her standing next to a large man in army green overalls. The deliveryman had a large water balloon on his right shoulder. His skin was pale and his head shaved clean. A name tag embroidered on his shirt read carl. He gave Emma a dull look and glanced at the skull with the same lack of curiosity.

  “You should remove that immediately,” Johnson said. “It brings death. It shouldn’t be in the house.”

  “Where do you want me to set this up?” the deliveryman asked.

  Johnson didn’t respond. The stark fear on her face prompted Emma to once again pick up the skull. Its black socket eyes seemed to watch her. She carried it past both Johnson and the deliveryman. Johnson cringed away as Emma crossed next to her, but the man just flicked his eyes between the skull and Emma. He stared at it with an impressive calm.

  “Lady, I got fifteen more deliveries to make. Where do you want this?” Emma heard the man ask again as she went out the back door, taking care to walk on the grass rather than the gravel of the driveway. The lawn felt warm under her feet. Hearing footsteps behind her, she looked back to see Johnson following at a safe distance. Emma kept going toward the garage, past the large green delivery truck parked in the driveway with the words springfed water emblazoned on the side. Once she reached the garage, she placed the skull gently on one of the tables. Johnson came to stand next to her.

  “Miss Emma, you should leave. That’s a message.”

  Emma had no doubt that it was, but she was intrigued that someone would go so far to try to frighten her, and in such a bizarre fashion. Wild men hacking at her with machetes scared her; Halloween props did not. She put her hands on her hips while she contemplated the skull. The deliveryman appeared behind Johnson holding a clipboard.

  “Voodoo bokor killed my neighbor when I lived back in Haiti,” the man said. He stepped closer to Johnson and thrust the clipboard at her. “Free trial is thirty days. You don’t like it you call the company and I’ll come back and take it away. Need to sign.” He handed Johnson a pen. While she read the paper on the clipboard, the man looked at Emma. “You don’t mess with a bokor. They bad. That skull means the evil one comes to get you.”

  “I don’t believe in voodoo,” Emma said. The man held her gaze with his dull eyes and emotionless face.

  “Voodoo bokor gonna kill you,” he said.

  “That’s enough!” Johnson snapped out the command. “I’ll have no such talk around me.” The man shifted his look to her.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. He flashed Emma a sour look, turned and sauntered away. Emma watched the truck reverse down the driveway and disappear out the gate. Johnson frowned.

  “What an unpleasant man,” she said. She folded the yellow contract copy that he’d given her. “I’m not sure that I believe in voodoo either, but I do believe that humans have an almost unlimited drive to destroy each other when they want something that someone else has.”

  “Interesting choice of words. What do you think they want to take from me?”

  “I think they want to stop you from collecting the
plants.”

  Emma thought so, too. It was the only logical explanation for both the man’s destruction in the garage and the skull in her bedroom.

  “It’s not going to work. The contract I have requires that I collect them, analyze them, and deliver my results in record time. I’m not giving up. My company needs this contract. After breakfast I’m going to pay a visit to Security. Find out who is currently on the island.”

  Half an hour later she returned to the garage. She started the car and shifted it into reverse.

  “Don’t you leave that awful thing in here! Take it with you,” Johnson called to her from the driveway’s edge. Emma nodded.

  “Could you hand it to me?”

  Johnson shook her head. “Oh no, I’m not touching it.”

  Emma sighed before putting the car back into park. She returned to the skull, put the socks back on her hands, and placed it down into the foot well. Then she reversed out of the driveway and headed to the airport.

  Terra Cay was only twenty miles long and four miles wide. The mangrove swamp sat on the farthest end and the airport ran along the length. The short landing strip created a challenge for pilots, because it ended at the base of one of the hills. A mistake in landing could mean smashing into a wall of rock and dirt. Inclement weather only increased the risk. Several planes had crashed over the years, killing three pilots and four passengers. Extending the strip was not an option, because the other end managed to butt up against a bog. The area was chosen for the landing strip precisely because it was unsuitable for any other use.

  Island Security was located in a small clapboard ranch house a quarter mile up the hill from the landing strip. It had the advantage of being close to the airport and in full view of arriving airplanes. This was also its disadvantage. Emma winced at the noise of an incoming plane. She parked in front of the building and lifted the skull out of the foot well. She closed the door with her foot and headed up the stairs to the front porch of the house. The door opened before she knocked.

  “Latisha told me you were on your way,” Moore said. He looked down at the skull in her hands. “Bring it in. We’d like a look at it.”