Our Island Inn (Quirky Tales from the Caribbean)

by Rebecca M. Hale

  Elsie glanced over her shoulder, pretending she’d heard a sound. “That’s Pickering’s truck coming up the drive. You’d better hurry.”

  “Right then. Thank you, Elsie.” His hands trembling, Glenn rose from his seat and slowly walked to the pavilion’s exterior stairs.

  ~ ~ ~

  ELSIE WATCHED THE innkeeper descend, holding her breath as his footsteps marched toward the clearing below.

  “She’s ready for you, Glenn,” she whispered. “The spirit is waiting for you on the path at the edge of the clearing.”

  Chapter 47

  Return to Parrot Ridge

  A HALF-HOUR LATER, Oliver unlocked the door to the reception building and sleepily stepped inside.

  Saturday morning was typically a bustling time, but a pall hung over Our Island Inn – both from the overcast sky and the aftermath of the previous evening’s grim discovery.

  There’d been no overnight guests.

  At Mary’s insistence, the Golden Girls had moved to the resort on the island’s west end. She’d deemed it a safer location to wait for news. They were losing faith that their missing Millicent would be found alive.

  They weren’t the only guests to back out of their reservations at the inn.

  Oliver groaned as he played the phone messages that had accumulated overnight. The calls were all either dinner or room cancellations.

  Information spread quickly on an island, rumors even faster. Reports of a corpse being carried across the deck and through the restaurant seating area had rapidly circulated – along with a resurgence of stories about the previous innkeepers and the curse of Parrot Ridge.

  No one wanted to be the next victim.

  ~ ~ ~

  OLIVER RUBBED HIS temples, trying to staunch the migraine building in his head.

  The morning was bound to get worse, not better.

  So far, Glenn was missing in action. He’d last been seen the night before lounging on the pool deck. When he didn’t return to the apartment, Oliver figured he had fallen asleep outside.

  It wasn’t the first time, Oliver reflected with a sigh.

  Glenn was likely holed up somewhere, hiding from the reality of their dire circumstances. Ability to cope with challenging situations had never been his strong suit.

  Oliver was trying not to blame Glenn for the current crisis, but he couldn’t help but think that everything had started to go downhill with the arrival of that wretched Romeo character.

  Of course, if he was honest with himself, life at the inn had been deteriorating for months.

  There was no time to worry about that now. He had to find a way out of their current predicament. It was a rough patch, nothing more. If he could just muddle through, things would be fine.

  Everything between him and Glenn would be fine.

  He glanced out the reception window toward the pavilion. There was yet another problem to add to his list. Maya had apparently packed up and left during the night. The suite she and Jesús shared had been emptied of their belongings.

  He sighed with exhaustion. What else could go wrong?

  As if answering his question, the reception’s phone began to ring.

  Hands on his hips, Oliver glared at the receiver.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Welcome to Our Island Inn.”

  The voice on the other end of the line was vaguely familiar, but Oliver couldn’t place it. He blinked, listening as an American woman asked if she could book a room for that evening. She obviously hadn’t heard about their recent difficulties.

  “I’m flying down from the States today. Actually, I’m already halfway there – I’m calling you from the Miami airport. Sorry for the short notice, but I’m hoping you can squeeze me in tonight.”

  Oliver cleared his throat. “I don’t think there will be any problem finding you a room. If you can give me your name and a credit card number, I’ll make your reservation.”

  There was a pause. “This is Olivia Hamilton. I stayed at the inn a few months back…with my husband.”

  “Oh, yes. Olivia.”

  Oliver nearly dropped the phone.

  “Yes, of course, I remember.”

  Chapter 48

  Strawberry Peach

  INSPECTOR PICKERING PUSHED open the reception door, clamping down on the bells after their first timid jingle.

  He was accompanied by the morning’s search team. Most of the crew from the night before had returned to help, including Elsie who had joined the group in the parking lot. The reverend was one of the few absentees. He was reportedly attending to the needs of a parishioner.

  Oliver looked up at Pickering. The innkeeper’s hand rested on the telephone’s receiver, which he had just placed in its cradle.

  “Hello, Captain,” he said hoarsely.

  Pickering didn’t bother to correct him. He pulled out his notepad and began ticking off his list of suspects. “I’m going to send the search team out for another sweep of the jungle. In the meantime, I’ll need to interview you, your partner, the cleaning staff, the chef…”

  “That will be difficult,” Oliver cut in apologetically.

  Pickering looked up from his notes. “Why do you say that?”

  “Maya’s gone, and I’ve lost track of Glenn.”

  The inspector’s brow furrowed. “Maya – the chef?”

  Pickering flipped the notepad shut. He could no longer avoid the issue. “Did she have a canning operation in your kitchen?”

  He winced at Oliver’s puzzled answer.

  “Why yes, of course.”

  ~ ~ ~

  A ROOSTER CROWED up from the ravine as Oliver led the way into the pavilion.

  Pickering motioned for the search team to wait by the bar outside the kitchen’s swinging doors – everyone except for Oliver and the junior deputy.

  He nodded to Elsie. “You know this place. Is anything missing or out of place?”

  Elsie stepped into the center aisle between the counters and surveyed the scene. Maya’s departure had left only a few recognizable holes. Her personal set of kitchen knives were gone, along with the ceramic bird that had rested at the edge of her workstation.

  “Just her personal items.” Elsie shook her head. “Nothing of importance, really.”

  With his habitual grunt, Pickering nodded to the pantry at the kitchen’s opposite end.

  “What about in there?”

  Oliver’s thin voice wasn’t more than a whisper.

  “That’s where Maya stored her canning supplies.”

  ~ ~ ~

  IN MARKED CONTRAST to the kitchen’s airy space, the pantry was dark, closed in, and – the inspector couldn’t help but notice – secluded.

  Pickering reached over his head to pull the string attached to the light bulb mounted to the ceiling. The light turned on, but it did little to improve visibility. It cast only a minimal glow across the wall of sealed glass jars.

  The inspector slid a small flashlight from his belt, flicked the switch, and aimed the beam at the shelving unit.

  “What are you looking for?” Oliver asked with concern.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Pickering ran his penlight along the side of the glass jars, trying to see through to the contents. The paper label wrapped around each container made it impossible to tell what had been sealed inside. There was no writing on the labels; the wrapper color apparently provided the only clue to the material that had been preserved.

  Pickering thought ruefully of his mentor’s glass jar experience fifteen years earlier. Then he handed his flashlight to Elsie, removed the nearest jar from the shelf, and unscrewed the lid.

  There was a tiny pop as the interior pressure released. The inspector curled his fingers around the rim of the lid and lifted it up.

  Eyes wide, Elsie aimed the flashlight at the opening.

  The contents were a blended mush of orange and red.

  Bracing himself, Pickering leaned toward the jar and sniffed.

  His brow furrowed.


  Gingerly, he dipped a hand into the jellied substance and pulled it out. He touched his coated fingertip to his tongue – and sighed with relief.

  “Strawberry peach.”

  Oliver frowned.

  “What did you think it might be?”

  Chapter 49

  Green Stands For…

  PICKERING WIPED HIS finger on a paper towel that Elsie had fetched from the kitchen. He drew in his breath, trying to formulate an appropriate response to Oliver’s question.

  “I suspected the jars might contain…”

  Before he could finish, Elsie called for his attention.

  “Inspector.”

  She aimed the flashlight at the lower portion of the shelf, pointing its beam at a row of jars wrapped in green labels. While still obscured by the paper wrapping, the contents of these containers appeared to be thicker, chunkier – and far less appetizing.

  Elsie picked one up and handed it to Pickering.

  The subsequent grunt was not the inspector’s ordinary fallback expression.

  As Pickering stared at a glass jar he had no intention of opening, Oliver crouched in front of the shelving unit and peered through the opening created by the container’s removal.

  He’d caught a glimpse of something hidden at the back of the row.

  Threading his hand through the gap, Oliver reached past the jars and pulled out a brown leather binder.

  As he brought Glenn’s journal up toward the light, two objects fell out of the front sleeve and clattered onto the floor.

  Elsie gasped at the sight of the gold chain and red earring. She’d planted them in the apartment, inside Glenn’s drawer in the jewelry box, for the inspector to find once he focused his missing persons inquiry on the innkeepers.

  There was no reason to panic, she told herself. The items’ presence inside the journal would still lead the inspector to name Glenn as the primary suspect.

  Pickering swung his light across the floor, illuminating the fallen objects as well as a sweatshirt that had been pushed up against the corner of the wall.

  Oliver knelt to the floor. “Hey, that belongs to…”

  As the inspector’s light flickered on the green–labeled jars, Oliver shifted his gaze from the sweatshirt to the scattered pieces of jewelry and then finally to the lower shelf. With his free hand, he turned the nearest jar.

  An eyeball floated to the top and rotated to look up through the glass.

  “Glenn!”

  ~ ~ ~

  WITH DIFFICULTY, PICKERING pried the journal from the shrieking innkeeper’s grasp. He thumbed through the pages to the last entry and skimmed the handwriting. The lines in his face deepened as he processed the information.

  “Elsie, send the search team home.”

  The inspector looked sternly at the man who had collapsed onto the floor beside the shelving unit.

  “Oliver, you’re going to have to come with me. We need to discuss this at the station.”

  Chapter 50

  The Holding Cell

  STAGNANT HEAT STEAMED the police station holding cell as the morning sun pushed through the clouds.

  Tucked into a niche at the bottom of a steep hill, the concrete block building received little of the cooling sea breeze that swept through the rest of town. Circular fans had been plugged into every available electrical outlet, but the blades’ feeble whirring failed to alleviate the sweltering conditions.

  Unbothered by the poor ventilation or perhaps drawn to it, the island’s insect population converged on the police station in hordes. Roaches, beetles and the odd centipede ambled across the walls in the entrance area; clusters of mosquitoes hovered in the receiving room’s still air. And in the windowless holding cell where Oliver’s limp body slumped in a chair next to a metal table, a fly buzzed beneath the ceiling’s bare light bulb.

  Elsie shuffled silently to the side of the room as Pickering prepared to begin his interrogation. The inspector paced a few strides back and forth, studying the stunned innkeeper.

  Oliver stared, unseeing, at the metal cuffs secured around his wrists. His shock appeared genuine, but with several dozen jars of human flesh having been identified in the restaurant’s kitchen pantry, at least three missing guests, and a cannibalistic husband and wife cooking team on the lam, Pickering couldn’t take any chances.

  The inspector had been rattled by what he’d seen at the inn. His only consolation was that while he was here at the station grilling Oliver, several other officers had been assigned the unenviable task of sifting through the rest of the pantry.

  Fingering the cross on the chain around his neck, Pickering reflected on what he’d read in Glenn’s diary. That would likely be the man’s only testimony. Given the eyeball they’d found floating in the green-labeled jar, it appeared that he had joined the growing list of individuals now presumed dead.

  However improbable, Glenn had been convinced that Oliver had killed the petty thief along with everyone else who’d recently vanished from the B&B. According to the diary, Glenn suspected Oliver had found out about his affair with the restaurant’s sous-chef. That explained the tensions Pickering had noticed between the two innkeepers over the last several months.

  The inspector released the chain and stepped toward the suspect, resting his weight against the table for intimidating effect.

  He squinted at Oliver, trying to determine if there was any truth to the assertions in Glenn’s diary. Was Oliver in cahoots with the cooking couple or just a hapless bystander?

  It was time to sort out these shenanigans and put the curse of Parrot Ridge to rest for good.

  “Perhaps you should start at the beginning.”

  ~ ~ ~

  PICKERING WAITED FOR a response he knew wouldn’t come. Oliver was still too overwhelmed to communicate.

  The inspector glanced up as the fly singed its wings against the light bulb. He followed the bug’s sad trajectory onto the tabletop.

  Hoping to jolt Oliver out of his catatonic state, Pickering swept the wounded insect off the table with a sweep of his hand.

  The man didn’t flinch.

  Frustrated, Pickering snapped his fingers at Oliver’s face. “Hello. Is anybody in there?”

  The sharp motion generated a blink. Nothing more.

  “Bah.”

  Pickering pushed away from the table. He looked across the room at Elsie and shook his head. He had specifically requested that she assist him with Oliver’s questioning.

  Right now, he was almost as interested in Elsie’s reactions as the innkeeper’s.

  ~ ~ ~

  OLIVER STIRRED IN his seat, causing the handcuffs to jangle against the table’s metal surface.

  Pickering spun around, fixing his attention on the suspect.

  The innkeeper struggled to speak, but his lips could do no more than sputter. With effort, he forced his mouth into a circular shape, but the only sound came out as a puff of air.

  “O…”

  Pickering lunged forward.

  “What’s that?”

  Oliver’s eyes glazed over as his consciousness left the holding cell. His head dropped to the table, and his eyelids fell shut.

  But as Pickering stomped around the room, hurling insults at the ceiling, the story the innkeeper had tried to tell continued on inside his head – while his mind began to untangle the twisted path that had led to the gory discovery in the restaurant’s kitchen pantry.

  ~ ~ ~

  PICKERING EVENTUALLY LEFT the holding cell and returned with a glass of water. Bending beside the table, the inspector tilted the glass and dribbled several drops across the side of Oliver’s face.

  It took a few solid splashes before the handcuffed innkeeper awoke. Pickering lifted Oliver’s shoulders off the table and repositioned him in the chair as he spit out his first word.

  “Olivia.”

  Chapter 51

  Olivia

  ELSIE PRESSED HER shoulders against the wall, trying to make herself invisible as she e
yed the doorway on the far side of the room. The morning had not unfolded quite the way she’d planned. But much as she hated to leave Oliver in the lurch, a hasty exit might soon be in order.

  Pickering had released the handcuffs so that the innkeeper could drink. Oliver took a sip from the refilled glass and began his story.

  “It started with Olivia Hamilton. The disappearances, that is.” He set the glass on the table. His grip was still unsteady.

  “She’s the inn’s previous owner, the wife of the man who was killed there fifteen years ago. She had remarried, but I recognized her name when she called to make the reservation – I remembered it from the documents associated with the land sale. She told me she was planning an anniversary vacation with her second husband. Given her history with the place, I thought the inn was an odd choice for that sort of celebration, but I couldn’t very well refuse her a room.”

  He sighed ruefully. “When she showed up with that horrible man, the one who kept going on about his little blue pills, I wished I’d told her we were booked.”

  Pickering resumed his pacing. He glanced over at Elsie. Unease shadowed the young woman’s face. Returning his attention to Oliver, he meted out his next question.

  “Did your partner know about Mrs. Hamilton’s connection to the inn?”

  “No.” Oliver wiped his sleeve across his flushed cheeks. “I handled all of the paperwork for the land purchase. I read the disclosures about the property…and what had happened before. But I never told Glenn about the first husband’s death, what they found in the previous pantry, or any of that. I didn’t want to spoil it for him. I told myself it didn’t matter.”

  “You lied to him.” Pickering stated the assessment in a flat tone.

  “Yes. I thought it was the right thing to do.”