The Legend of Fuller’s Island

by Jan Fields

  Mary Beth rubbed her hands together. “So, do we grill Mrs. Ayers?”

  “Eventually,” Ian said. “But right now, it might be better not to. I’d like to ask around at some businesses they may have visited, and I’d rather no one called ahead to warn people off.”

  “Great,” Mary Beth said. “When do we start?”

  “Now would be fine,” Annie said. “The sooner we start, the sooner we find Alice.”

  “I don’t believe I’m up for it,” Stella said. “I’d like a nice hot soak and some rest before dinner. In fact, if you are all sleuthing into the dinner hour, you can bring me back a nice salad.”

  “We can do that,” Annie agreed. “Are you OK?”

  Stella nodded as she walked over to sit on the edge of the bed. “Just tired. We made our last road trip at a more leisurely rate.”

  “Lives weren’t at stake the last time,” Mary Beth said.

  They left Stella to her rest and headed out to the parking lot. “Where to first, Mr. Mayor?” Mary Beth asked.

  Ian smiled. “Is the ‘Mr. Mayor’ a hint that I’m being bossy?”

  “No,” Mary Beth said with a grin. “You can tell when you’re being bossy. Smoke comes out of Annie’s ears.”

  “It does not,” Annie protested, then when her friends both turned to look at her, she relented a little. “I save that for when he’s being overprotective.”

  “I won’t apologize for caring.”

  Mary Beth stepped between them. “OK—back to the original question. Where to first?”

  “I thought we’d stop by the police department,” Ian said. “I programmed the address into the GPS at the hotel last night along with a few others. We may get more details there on what they’re doing to find Jim and Alice.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Mary Beth said cheerfully, and then she quickly hopped into the back of the SUV, leaving Annie to ride in the front next to Ian.

  “That is a good idea,” Annie agreed as Ian opened the door for her.

  The warmth in Ian’s smile made Annie blush, even though she couldn’t have said exactly why. They pulled out of the small parking lot and turned back onto the state road.

  “So … do we have a plan for the police department?” Mary Beth said. “Shall we go in like they do on television—good-cop, bad-cop? Because if we do, I want to be the bad cop.”

  Annie stifled a grin at the idea of tiny Mary Beth intimidating anyone, but Ian didn’t even try to repress a chuckle. “I thought we’d just go in and introduce ourselves and ask questions.”

  Mary Beth sat back and crossed her arms. “Party pooper.”

  Ian grinned at her in the rearview mirror. “Maybe you can be the bad cop when we get back to the inn and grill Mrs. Ayers.” That seemed to perk Mary Beth up considerably.

  The GPS directions took them back the way they came, though they turned off the state road to reach the police station. The station was a squat white cinderblock building with a flagpole in front. A cracked walk led to double glass doors. Several windows faced the street, each with a small air conditioner dripping into the narrow bed that ran the length of the building. The bed held a row of exactly spaced, severely trimmed boxwoods and a lot of brown bark mulch. Taken together, the look was institutional and slightly depressing.

  Inside was more of the same. The walls were half cheap, dark paneling and half cinder-block, painted an odd shade of green. The air inside was warm and felt thicker than the air outside. Ian walked to the front desk, pulling a notebook out of his pocket as he went. He introduced himself to the woman behind the desk and explained that he was following up on some calls Chief Edwards had made.

  The woman looked at Ian sharply, reminding Annie for a moment of Ian’s secretary Charlotte. Then she simply nodded and said, “Let me get the chief.”

  Several minutes later, the woman trailed back to her stool and a painfully thin, older man came through a door, holding out his hand. “I’m Chief Harper. You’re lucky you caught me here; I’m usually home by now. I understand you’re the mayor of Stony Point, Maine?”

  “That’s right,” Ian said, shaking the man’s outstretched hand. “And these are friends of the missing people. This is Annie Dawson, and this is Mary Beth Brock.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your friends going missing,” Chief Harper said. “I didn’t actually talk to either of them.” He turned to the woman on the stool. “You remember speaking to them though, don’t you, Doris?”

  Doris seemed unhappy at the question. “We aren’t a big tourist area,” she said. “So I don’t get that many folks walking in—’specially not someone who looked like a hooligan and claimed to be a fancy book author.”

  Annie wasn’t sure whether to be offended or amused by the woman’s description of Jim. It did sound a lot like the way Stella talked about him, but somehow it sounded worse coming from a stranger.

  “And he asked about Fuller’s Island,” Ian prompted.

  The woman’s frown darkened. “Yeah, he claimed to have permission to take pictures there. I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t real steady on his feet, and I thought he might have been drinking.”

  That helped convince Annie. Now she was insulted on Jim’s behalf. “He’s a little unsteady because he lost his legs in a hotel bombing in a war zone. He was a war correspondent.”

  The woman shrugged. “I didn’t know that, did I?”

  Ian cleared his throat for attention. “So, did you help Mr. Parker?”

  “I sent him to talk to Leroy,” the woman said.

  The group turned back to Chief Harper. “One of my officers. He checks over the island now and again. Runs off the ghost hunters. He’s the one who went out and looked for your friends.”

  “Could we talk to him?”

  “I’d be happy to let you,” Chief Harper said. “But Leroy had a family emergency and took some time off.”

  “Perhaps we could talk to him at home,” Ian said.

  “He’s not at home,” the Chief said. “The family emergency took him to Georgia. I don’t have a number.”

  “How convenient,” Mary Beth muttered.

  “We filed a report after your chief called,” Chief Harper said. “But honestly, you’re talking about two adults who can do pretty much whatever they like. It sounds to me like they just changed their plans and didn’t let the nosy neighbors back home know about it.”

  “That’s because you don’t know Alice and Jim,” Annie said.

  “If you did,” Mary Beth added. “You wouldn’t say anything so insulting.”

  Chief Harper and Doris both puffed up some at that, and Ian quickly spoke up. “Thank you both for your time. We’ll be going out to the island to see if our friends left anything behind that might be meaningful to us. I have permission from the owner.”

  Annie looked at Ian in surprise. She hadn’t known he’d spoken to the owner of the island.

  “I wish you good luck,” Chief Harper said, sounding as if he wished them anything but good luck. “Let me know if my officers can help you in any way.”

  “Actually, you can,” Ian said. “You could let me know the name of a boat rental in the area.”

  “Rental?” Chief Harper said. “You know your way around a boat?”

  “I come from a long line of lobstermen,” Ian answered. “I was on a boat before I was on a bike.”

  The Chief exchanged a look with Doris. “I reckon you should try Maynard’s Boats and Bait. He does some trade in tourist boat rentals.”

  “Do you have an address for that?” Ian asked.

  “Look that up for the nice folks,” Chief Harper said to Doris. He sounded a bit cheerier now that the interview was clearly winding down. “If y’all will excuse me, I need to finish up some paperwork. It’s the bane of my existence.”

  “I know how that is,” Ian told him.

  The chief disappeared back through the door from which he’d first come. Doris grudgingly pulled out a skinny telephone book and looked up the boat rental addres
s in the yellow pages. She scrawled something on one of the department business cards and handed it back. “You need directions?”

  “No, thank you,” Ian said. “We’ll let you get back to your work.”

  He quickly ushered the women outside, where he pulled a pen from his pocket and quickly wrote on the card he held. When he finished, Annie looked at him quizzically. “I saw a few other boat rentals on the page Doris was checking,” he said. “I thought I would write them down, just in case Maynard’s is less than welcoming.”

  “Clever,” Mary Beth said admiringly.

  Ian looked up and down the street. Directly behind the police station, a whitewashed water tower looked down on them. More businesses lined the street further down. “Let’s take a little walk and see if anyone remembers Alice and Jim.”

  They walked past the parking lot for the police department and soon reached a short row of brick storefronts: a hardware store, a small grocery, and a dry cleaner.

  “I think we should divide and conquer,” Mary Beth said. “We’ll look less intimidating one at a time. I’ll take the dry cleaner, and Ian should probably do the hardware store. It’s a guy place.”

  “Hey,” Annie said. “I’ve spent a lot of time in Malone’s Hardware in Stony Point.”

  “Do you want the hardware store?” Ian said.

  Annie shook her head. “Knowing Alice, the grocery is the most likely. She’d want snacks.”

  They divided and headed into the stores. The grocery was small with cramped aisles between metal rows of shelving. Cold storage lined the back and one side wall. The store was quiet except for the sound of the ceiling fan which wobbled slightly as it turned.

  The store had two checkout stands, but only one was manned. The woman sat perched on a stool that looked like a twin to the one in the police department. She looked with mild interest at Annie as she approached. “May I help you?”

  “I’m looking for a friend who was visiting in Preacher’s Reach,” Annie said. “She’s fallen out of touch, and I’m worried about her.”

  The woman’s interest turned to concern. “A woman traveling alone?”

  “No, she was traveling with a friend,” Annie said. She pulled out her wallet and showed the young woman a photo of Alice holding Boots. “This is Alice.”

  The woman smiled. “I remember her. Really pretty hair. I asked her about the color. I thought I’d like to do mine that color, but she said hers was natural.”

  “All her life,” Annie said. “Could you tell me when you saw her?”

  The woman chewed her lip as she thought. “I’m not sure. Every day is like every other day, ya know? It might have been a week ago, maybe less. I’m sorry.”

  “Did you talk about anything other than her hair?” Annie asked.

  Again, the woman took a moment to think. “She asked me about good places to eat. I like The Fish House and Sandy’s Pizza—but stay away from the Pizza Pie Palooza, that stuff is nasty cardboard. The grade school does better pizza.”

  Annie felt a rush of hope as she quickly wrote down the two more places to check and ask questions. “I really appreciate this,” she said. “I’ve been worried.”

  “Leslie!”

  The sharp voice made both women jump. The cashier looked toward the back of the store at a hawk-nosed, balding man in a long white apron. “I need you back here.”

  Leslie looked at him in surprise. “I’m with a customer, Walt.”

  “I need you right now!”

  Leslie gave Annie an apologetic shrug. “Coming.”

  “Thank you,” Annie whispered as Leslie headed to the back of the store. Annie wondered if she should wait for the young woman to come back or just go see what her friends had found out. She waited a couple long minutes, but whatever the man had wanted must have been time-consuming as Leslie didn’t come back.

  Finally, Annie headed outside. She found Mary Beth waiting. “Any luck?” Annie asked.

  Mary Beth shook her head. “I guess Alice didn’t need anything cleaned. How about you?”

  “Actually, yes,” Annie said. Before she could say anything else, Ian walked out of the hardware store with a small bag.

  “Shopping, Ian?” Annie asked.

  “I thought buying something might break the ice.”

  “Did it work?” Annie asked.

  Ian shook his head. “It was weird though. I could have sworn the guy’s face changed when I described Jim’s limp, but he said he hadn’t seen them.”

  “Well, the lady in the grocery met Alice,” Annie said as she held up her small notebook. “And she gave me the name of some restaurants she recommended to Alice. We can ask at these places.”

  “Fantastic,” Mary Beth said. “So, where to now?”

  “It’s not suppertime yet,” Ian said. “I vote we try the boat rental place that the chief mentioned.”

  “Gets my vote,” Mary Beth said.

  Annie agreed and they headed quickly back toward the police station parking lot to get Mary Beth’s car.

  The drive to the boat rental took them down increasingly narrow, bumpy roads. The air was thick with moisture. Annie gazed at the trees as they passed. The trunks were covered with patchy lichen, and the forest floor was dotted with low-growth green plants and clumps of mushrooms.

  As Annie watched the passing landscape, she had an idle thought. The woods here were so different from Maine that it was a little like slipping into a fairy tale—or a ghost story with the eerie twisted trees and dripping moss.

  The GPS broke into her thoughts as it directed them to turn just ahead, assuring them that that they would soon “reach their destination.”

  The small wooden building perched next to the water was well-kept and showed little sign of the dampness and weather it must experience in the swampy area. “I half-expected to see a tumble-down shack and a couple of guys with questionable dental hygiene,” Mary Beth said.

  “Mary Beth!” Annie scolded. “You watch too many movies.”

  Ian pulled the SUV into the gravel parking lot, and they piled out. Ian led the group into the small building. An older teenaged girl with long black hair streaked with pink leaned on the tall wooden counter. She stood up when they walked in. “Hi! Welcome to Maynard’s. I’m Ellie Maynard.”

  “Hello,” Ian answered. “We were hoping to ask you some questions about a boat you rented.”

  The girl frowned slightly. “One we rented?”

  “A friend of mine rented it,” Annie said, pulling out the photo of Alice to show the girl.

  The girl looked at the photo, suddenly nervous. She looked up at Annie, then back at the photo. “Well …” she said.

  The sound of footsteps on the wooden porch drew everyone’s attention as a man about Annie’s age walked in. His face was a road map of fine lines, suggesting a man who’d spent much of his life in the sun. He wore jeans and a faded T-shirt under a fishing vest. “Howdy,” he said. “What can I do ya for?”

  “They’re looking for someone,” Ellie said nervously, holding out the photo toward the man.

  He took the photo, glanced quickly at it, and handed it back to Annie. “Yep, I remember her,” he said smoothly. “She and a man rented a boat for a day and then dropped it back off after hours.”

  “Do you know what day this was?” Ian asked.

  “Let me check my record book,” the man said. He walked behind the counter, and the girl scooted well out of his way. He pulled out a battered spiral-bound book and flipped through the pages. “Here we are.” He named the date that would have matched Alice and Jim’s first day in Preacher’s Reach, the same day that the police chief said they’d come to the police station.

  “That’s it?” Ian said. “Just the one day?”

  The man nodded. “Right, just the one day. We don’t get a lot of rentals this time of year, and they were going out to Fuller’s Island, which is unusual too. I had to call Chief Harper to clear it since the island is posted land.”

  “Do you know o
f any other boat rental they might have used for the rest of their stay?” Ian asked.

  The man shook his head. “I got the feeling they were only planning to stay in Preacher’s Reach for the one day. The man said they’d only need the boat once.”

  “Did they mention where they were staying?” Ian asked.

  The man shook his head. “Maybe at once of those box motel things along the highway? They get the most overnight traffic since they’re so easy to find.”

  “Did they seem OK?” Annie asked.

  “Sure,” the man said. “They were laughing and joking.”

  “We’d like to rent a boat to go out to the island tomorrow,” Ian said.

  The man shook his head, his face apologetic. “I wish I could. We’ve got all the boats out of the water for repairs. We do it every year about this time when the tourist trade ends but before the weather turns bad.”

  “Can you recommend another place we might get a boat?” Ian asked.

  “I doubt you’ll find one,” the man answered. “All the boat rentals pull their boats about this time every year. This area is hard on boats. We do a lot of repair to keep them working during tourist season.”

  “Well, I appreciate your help,” Ian said. Annie heard Mary Beth snort behind her, but Ian acted as if he didn’t hear. “Could you tell us your name, just in case, we think of any other questions?”

  “I’m Bob Maynard,” the man said with a thin smile. “But I’m sure I won’t have any other answers for you. I’ve told you all I know.”

  “When you went through the boat,” Annie said, stepping forward before Ian could tell the man goodbye, “did you happen to see anything my friends might have left behind?”

  The man turned his sharp eyes toward her. He paused as if thinking, then shook his head. “No, they returned it really clean. I wish all the tourists did. You know, I expect your friends headed for some area that would be a little more romantic—they seemed like they’d like some place like that.”

  “You might be right,” Ian said smoothly before Annie could refute the man’s words. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Happy to help,” the man said. As they turned to leave, the man spoke again, addressing Annie. “You know, ma’am, I expect your friends will contact you soon.”