Left alone with the turtle, Taryn sighed. It was always something.
A noise came then, the slight sound of laughter behind her. She started to rise to her feet, the words, “Well that was fast” on her lips. Something made her stop, though, and she fell back to the ground. Taryn was protected by a dune to her back but could now clearly hear the sounds of several men joking and laughing with one another.
“Probably just some guys looking for fun,” she assured the turtle. “They won’t bother us.” A black-crowned night heron screeched just then and Taryn jumped.
“Geeze, I’m getting skittish,” she laughed nervously. Being a female alone on the sand, though, made her nervous. Suppose the other men had been drinking or doing something illegal?
One of them laughed and then Taryn heard the sound of metal. They were at the hotel site, then, she thought to herself. Maybe they’d forgotten something. She strained her ears harder as she listened to their laughter.
“Just don’t drop it for Christ’s sake,” one of them muttered. His voice was raspy, like maybe he smoked a lot.
“Did anyone even look at it?” another one laughed. He sounded younger than the other one. “How the hell do we even know what’s in here?”
“We don’t,” a third man replied. “We don’t ask and they don’t tell. Just walk!”
Taryn slowly brought herself to her knees and peered over the tall sea grass. She was shielded from their view but realized with a start that they were only about ten feet away. They worked in the dark and Taryn watched in fascination as they lifted a box heavy enough that all three of them had to lift.
“One, two, three!” the smoker cried and they all raised the box high in the air. Straining from the effort, they carried it to a nearby truck and slid it onto the bed. “One more!”
Taryn watched again as they went back to the spot near her and lifted another one from the ground and carried it back to the truck.
“What they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em,” a skinny man in a baseball cap laughed.
“Hey, is this the turtle?” Taryn jumped and spun around. At the same time, she heard the men above her running across the grass and jumping into the truck. As it took off Taryn watched as the older gentleman walked towards her.
“Uh, yeah, this is it,” she pointed nervously.
The man appeared to be in his late sixties but walked with a lift in his step. He moved with little effort through the sand, a container that looked like a cooler in his hands.
Taryn watched as he gently pried the plastic off the baby and then lowered it into the container. “I’ll take him back to the hospital and let them check him out,” he promised. “Thanks for calling.”
“Can I come check on him later?” Taryn asked. Now that she wasn’t alone she didn’t feel as spooked, but she hadn’t yet recovered from what she’d just seen the men do.
“Sure!” he smiled, his teeth sparkling in the night. “Just come on over tomorrow and we’ll give you an update.”
Taryn walked back up to the parking lot with him. It was only after she was back in the safety of her house that she let herself accept the truth.
Just before she’d turned around she’d made definite eye contact with the man in the baseball cap. She wasn’t sure he could pick her out of a lineup, what with the moon behind her and the tall sea grass between them, but she’d be able to pick him out of anything.
Chapter 13
“You weren’t supposed to be here until tonight,” Taryn cried, pleasant surprise filling her.
Matt stood on her front porch, a small rolling suitcase behind him. His midnight-black hair was soft and shiny, his dark skin smooth without a single line. He beamed at Taryn, his smile stretching from ear to ear as he reached out and engulfed her in an embrace. “I couldn’t wait,” he mumbled into her hair.
Taryn, who’d only just woken up when she heard the pounding on the door, was wearing a ratty T-shirt with her hair sticking out every which way from her head. She knew her breath was not nice.
“Come on in,” she said, trying to shield her mouth with her hand. “I’ll be right back.”
“Are you trying to hide your morning breath?” Matt laughed as she darted off into the bathroom.
“No!” Taryn cried as she frantically scrubbed at her teeth with one hand and pulled a brush through her tangled mess of hair with the other.
By the time she came back out Matt had made himself at home on her couch and was flipping through her pictures on her laptop. “These are fantastic,” he said, zooming in on the shots she’d taken off inside the hotel.
“Thanks,” Taryn answered, settling down beside him. She snuggled into his side and then took his arm and put it around her. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Matt leaned back against the couch, bringing Taryn with him. “Me too. I didn’t think I could last another day. And I’m digging your bedroom attire.”
Taryn, aware that her T-shirt was riding up her legs and bunching around her waist giggled, a rare sound for her. “I wore it just for you.”
“Hey, isn’t that my T-shirt from high school?”
Taryn nodded and snuggled in close. “Yep.”
“I’ve been missing that for, oh, fifteen years or something,” he mused.
“Yep.”
They might have found other ways to entertain themselves, but a few minutes later the housekeeper strolled through the front door.
“Oh!” she shrieked and jumped when she saw Matt and Taryn cuddled on the couch. “I’m sorry! I’ll come back.”
Taryn laughed at the way she tried to shield her eyes and look the other way. “It’s okay. I’ve got to get dressed and we’re going out. Please, don’t let us keep you. I know you want to get this done and go home.”
Carla grinned sheepishly and nodded at Matt. “It’s true. This is my easiest house. Taryn doesn’t do much of anything in here.”
“Is that so? Things must have changed from the packrat I know,” Matt teased her.
Matt continued to go through her photos when Taryn excused herself to get dressed. When she emerged a few minutes later, she found Carla mopping the kitchen floor, her earbuds stuffed in her ear and iPod on.
“Hey, I want to tell you about something that happened last night,” Taryn said as she slipped on her sandals.
“What’s up? And will you need your camera? I can put the battery back in if you want,” Matt gestured to where it was charging in the wall.
“Yeah, sure. Can’t leave Miss Dixie behind,” Taryn replied. “So last night I went for a walk on the beach and…”
When she finished Matt studied her and frowned. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Sounds like something illegal was going on. You’re lucky they didn’t try to hurt you.”
“Oh, I was fine,” she admonished him but inside she agreed. She’d been nervous herself.
“Look, I’d just keep it to yourself, okay?” Matt looked worried for her sake. “I know I’m usually all about calling authorities and doing things by the book but I don’t like you being here alone and thinking something might happen.”
“Well, normally I’d be all about putting my nose into places where it doesn’t belong but on this point I agree with you,” Taryn said. “The last thing I need is more trouble.”
With both of them ready to leave the house Taryn threw her hand up in a wave towards Carla. “See you later Carla,” she bellowed.
The housekeeper didn’t look up.
“Bye Carla!” Taryn tried again.
This time Carla jerked her head up from the mop and fiddled with a button on her iPod. “Bye-bye girl,” she waved. “See you next week!”
Once they were settled into the golf cart and Taryn was whizzing down the road Matt chuckled to himself.
“What are you laughing about?” she asked.
“Your maid,” he answered. “You do realize that she didn’t have that iPod on, right?”
“What?” Taryn asked in confusion.
Matt shru
gged. “No idea why. It hadn’t been on since she started working. She was just pretending not to hear you there at the end.”
Taryn pursed her lips and picked up the speed. Now she had something else to worry her.
“So what are we looking for?”
Matt held up a bulging file folder and flipped through the loose papers inside. “It’s a little hard to know where to start.”
Taryn, sitting crossed-legged in the middle of the dusty room, held up her folder. “We’re looking for records on William and Rachel,” she replied. “Back then they would’ve kept records of when they stayed, what they did while they were here, and maybe even more detailed information about who they were. You know, so that they could provide the best service.”
“And you think that will help?” Matt mused, settling in beside her so that their shoulders were touching.
“It can’t hurt. There’s been almost nothing about either one of them online. It seems that except for the fact they were rich and lived in New York City with some of these other guys there wasn’t anything notable about either one of them. He didn’t invent anything, she was an heiress but not, like, an important one.”
Matt grunted, his concentration keen on the files.
“And I promise, Matt, that tonight we’ll do something fun,” Taryn promised. “I swear.”
“Oh yeah, we will,” he agreed. “Why else you think I follow you around in dirty rooms and spend hours digging my nose into the lives of people who have been dead for a hundred years?”
Taryn swatted him with a century-old hotel receipt and smiled.
Ellen hadn’t been surprised when Taryn asked to see the records. She let her assume that the more she knew about the place, the easier it was to work. “Now it’s hot and stuffy up here,” Ellen’s assistant, Amy, had warned them as they climbed the stairs in the back of the hotel, “so you might want to crack those windows.”
She was right. It was hot and stuffy. And the lone light bulb that dangled from the ceiling did very little to brighten it up. Still, once she’d gotten into the work Taryn forgot about those things.
Taryn was fascinated with the history of the hotel and turn of the century period in general. She could’ve spent hours poring over the records, letters, and newspaper clippings. She spent about ten minutes reading in detail all the items someone had ordered from the mainland, from flour to shoe polish, for instance. It had nothing to do with what she was looking for but even the smallest of details gave her insight on the inner workings of the island.
Matt, who looked up on occasion and shook his head at her rapturous attention to such things, claimed she missed her calling as an anthropologist.
“Okay, got one,” Matt said after about an hour. “Right here. They checked in here for the first time. There’s a note by their names.”
Taryn took the piece of paper and studied it. “Hmmm…so this is dated more than a year before the fire burned everything. So I guess that tells us that they weren’t newcomers. People obviously knew who they were.”
Matt went back to his folder and continued making a neat stack of everything he’d looked at already. Just a few seconds went by before he spoke again. “Okay, here’s something else. Very interesting.”
“Huh?” Taryn was lost again, this time in notes on the construction of Adena Cottage.
“Look here. It says that they were moved. They apparently spent two nights in this room,” Matt pointed to the first location in the note, “and then requested to move to another one for the rest of their stay.”
“Does it give a reason?” Taryn asked, peering over his arm.
“Yeah. It says they wanted something that caught the morning light. Kind of strange,” Matt said.
“Maybe not. Some people like the sunrise,” Taryn shrugged. “It’s the best light to paint in. I just never get up that early. Maybe Rachel was a painter herself.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Matt continued, “because it also makes a note to say that they’ve requested extra lamps.”
Taryn placed her folder on the floor and rose to her feet. The small window they’d opened to ease the stuffiness was at the other end of the room. She faced it now. It was afternoon, and although the sun was high in the sky, long dark shadows raced across the floor.
“Were they in this building at first?” she asked as she walked towards the window.
Matt nodded and told her the room number.
When she reached the window she gazed outside. The grounds on this side of the hotel were darker, full of trees that had been there for centuries. This entire part of the hotel was cast in shadows and somehow gloomier than the rest. William and Rachel’s room would’ve faced that direction.
“That explains that, then,” Taryn nodded.
“What?”
She looked back and pursed her lips. “I think one of them was afraid of the dark…”
Steve and the other valets were standing on the steps, heads bent together, when Matt and Taryn walked out.
“You guys planning a heist or something?” Taryn teased them.
The four men looked up with sheepish grins and laughed. “Naw, there’s a race going on,” Steve explained. “We’ve all got bets going. The pot’s big this time.”
“Hey, I heard you found a baby turtle last night,” one of the guys said to Taryn. She’d seen him around but didn’t know his name. They hadn’t actually spoken to one another yet.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
The man, who could’ve been anything from twenty to fifty, shrugged. “My uncle was the one on call. When he said your name I knew who you were.”
“Do you know anything about the turtle? We were getting ready to go over there and check on him.”
“Sorry,” the man shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Where’d you find him at?” Steve asked, leaning back against his wooden stand.
“On the beach by where the new hotel is going up,” Taryn replied.
“Huh. It’s good you found him instead of some kid,” Steve said.
“Well, it was late at night,” Taryn explained. “I was the only one out there.”
She hadn’t meant to share that with anyone but felt put on the spot.
“My uncle said it was wound up in some garbage, so it’s a good thing you were out there that late. It wouldn’t have survived at all if you hadn’t seen him and called,” the other valet spoke up.
Taryn nodded and started on down to the sidewalk, Matt beside her. “Well, I think we’ll go over there and see how he’s doing,” she said. “See you guys later!”
Once they were out of earshot Taryn sighed. “Damn it, I wasn’t going to announce to the world that I was out on the beach alone like that.”
“I think you’re fine with that group,” Matt chuckled and reached for her hand.
“See, I told you I’d take you out and treat you right,” Taryn said, lightly punching Matt on the arm.
Nodding in agreement, Matt leaned back on the park bench and took a bite of his frozen yogurt concoction. “This is wonderful.”
“Yeah, well, nothing’s too good for my baby. I can buy you the best fro-yo money can get,” Taryn grinned.
It was nice, though; he was right.
After a dinner of crab cakes and rolls at Barbara Jean’s they were sitting in the park, simultaneously people watching and gazing at the water as the sun set. St. Simon’s Island was vastly different from Jekyll Island. Where Jekyll was quiet and laid back and moved at a serene pace, St. Simon’s was vibrant and full of life.
The pier was full of teenagers showing off to one another, couples strolling hand in hand eating ice cream, and families barking orders at their children to not “get too close to the edge.” Grizzled fishermen cast lines into the ocean, buckets beside them full of their catches. The scent from the fish washing station drifted through the air and mixed with the heat of the day and the salt of the ocean.
Clothing boutiques, small restaurants, ice
cream stores, and toy shops peppered the small village. There were surprisingly few souvenir places and Taryn appreciated that. It was still a tourist destination; that much was obvious, yet managed to look like a quaint seaside town.
Of course, Taryn had driven around the roundabout twice before she figured out how to get off. It annoyed her that a traffic circle had beaten her but she was up and ready for round two on the way back.
“I think I’d like to live here,” Taryn said suddenly.
Matt turned and looked at her, surprise etching his face. “Really? It’s not too crowded?”
“Kind of the right kind of crowded, I think,” she answered, watching a group of toddlers playing on a live oak. Its limbs reached all the way to the ground, and the little ones were riding one of the limbs like a horse, giggling and shouting with glee. Taryn thought she felt her uterus jump a little.
“You’d move here, without there being any historical homes or big abandoned place to buy and fix up?” he teased her.
She’d thought about that already.
“I thought you didn’t do ranch houses,” Matt added.
Well, that was true enough and St. Simon’s seemed to have something against two story homes. And gutters. There were no gutters. What was up with that?
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. The quiet tree-lined streets we saw, the kids playing out on their bikes, the clean beaches, the nice restaurants, the history…Maybe I could give up my old houses for all those things.”
“And me?” He asked it teasingly, but his soft tone had Taryn looking at him. For a moment she thought he looked sad but then his eyes softened and she figured it must have been a trick of the moonlight that was taking over.
“You’d be welcome to visit anytime you wanted,” she assured him.
“Every night?”
Used to feeling cold chills when something supernatural was about to happen, now Taryn felt cold chills of another kind creep across her neck. “Sure. Anytime.”
Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) Page 12
