My thoughts were interrupted by Darcy, who plunked two laden dishes down on the table in front of us, right next to the woman, and went back to get something for himself.
I glanced at the woman sitting right beside me, and said, “Mind if we join you?”
She glanced up and gave me a fleeting smile, and I could see that the shiner was accompanied by some big-time swelling.
“Looks painful,” I said, shamelessly fishing for information.
“I banged into my cabin door,” she said, staring at me, seemingly daring me to contradict her. I wouldn’t have even thought to contradict her except for the pleading look in her eyes that was there only for an instant and then it was gone. So fast I couldn’t really be sure it had been there at all, so I ignored it.
“I’m Cordi. And this is Martha.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said.
Right, I’d already forgotten my earlier episode. I held out my hand.
“Rosemary Nesbitt.” She gripped my hand without much interest. She was obviously somewhere far away and Martha and I had interrupted her.
“So I see you have met Rosemary!” Darcy placed his tray across from us and sat down.
“She’s our resident vet-in-training. Singlehandedly nursed a baby armadillo back to health.” Darcy’s smile was big and broad, but oddly disconcerting. I looked at Rosemary. She was staring at him, the way one stares at something of little interest, but he ignored her and said, “Rosemary is in her third year of vet school and …”
“Fourth and last year,” interrupted Rosemary. She turned and looked at me then. “I’m here helping to vaccinate the female wild horses so they can’t get pregnant.”
I hadn’t heard of such a thing and I said so.
“It’s a small island and the horses can do tremendous damage, grazing the dunes. The herd here is already too big, but no one wants to cull them. This seemed like a good compromise. Give them PZP.”
“PZP?” I asked.
“Porcine zona pellucida. It’s an immunocontraceptive vaccine.” Rosemary sighed. “Anyway, there are a number of island residents who are vehemently opposed to this vaccination. They feel we should be leaving things to nature.”
“Only nature never envisioned horses on this island,” said Darcy. “The Spanish released some horses in the 1500s on the much bigger island to the north of us and now the herd there numbers about two hundred or so. Right, Rosemary?”
It was interesting seeing Darcy’s technique to draw Rosemary into the conversation, but it seemed to work. Her eyes had come afire and she was tracing her hands through the air to punctuate what she was saying. “That island is big enough to accommodate the horses. But this island is too small. They figure the horses got here in the first place by swimming across the channel. No other way they could have come. So now it is crucial to preserve island habitat. The horses are considered exotic or weed species that are not endemic to the area. But that doesn’t seem to matter to some of the islanders.”
“Is that where you got your black eye?” It just came out of my mouth without warning.
She swivelled to look at me and said in a clipped tongue, “I thought I told you it was my cabin door.” End of conversation.
chapter four
Rosemary ate in silence, and when she was finished she got up without a word, nodded her head at me, and went to join the man reading the gossip rag. Darcy and Martha were deep in conversation about something, so I finished my meal and thought about getting up for some more. At that moment the screen door of the mess room squeaked open and Stacey walked in, or rather staggered. She was sweating copiously and her face was an unhealthy pasty grey. I wondered how she had managed the stairs with her gimpy leg and her excess pounds. She looked like a heart attack waiting to happen. She surveyed the room in what I can only describe as controlled panic. Hiding something, but not very successfully. She remained standing at the door and said, “May I have your attention, please?” The buzz of conversation slowly petered out, as she accepted a glass of water from Darcy, who had darted out of his seat to help her.
“As you all know, we enjoy the use of these research facilities because of the islanders. As director of this research facility, I must remind you that if we lose their trust we lose this station. The islanders voted for the vaccination of the horses, and for this reason we must support that decision and help Wyatt and Rosemary do their job.”
Who was Wyatt? I wondered.
Stacey continued. “It has come to my attention that someone among you has tried to sabotage the vaccine.”
The room had gone quiet, the way a room can when those in it have all been accused of a crime. What a time to be visiting the island, I thought.
“Can you tell us the details?” asked David.
Stacey looked around and sighed. “Apparently, some of the vaccine has gone missing. Is a Dr. Wyatt Sinclair here?” I followed her gaze around the room. A man sitting at the far back gestured with his hand. He was, for lack of a better word, an impressive looking man, with a head of wildly thick white hair that cascaded over half of his very expansive forehead and accented the startling blue of his eyes. He exuded a self-confidence that was apparent even before he spoke. He rose to his feet, laughed a hollow laugh, and said, “Will the perpetrator please stand up now so that we can get on with our job?”
No one stood up. “Worth a try,” he said, but the way he had said it left no doubt that he wanted his vaccine back. “Seriously, someone had the gall to let themselves into my cabin yesterday and steal a bottle of vaccine that was on my desk. This is totally unacceptable, and I need it back.” He scanned the room, his face unreadable, and then suddenly he smiled, a charming cat-in-the-cream sort of smile, at Stacey, who had a queer look on her face, as if she was going to be sick.
“Why are you singling us out for sabotage? I mean, there are islanders who don’t want this to happen.” The deep, guttural voice came from the dark-haired man sitting beside Rosemary.
Wyatt bowed to Stacey. Stacey hesitated, her face quickly suffused with blood and her eyes clouded. The confusion on her face was intriguing.
“I am aware of that, Sam,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “But the easiest route is usually the correct route, and all of us here in this room would have an easier time sabotaging the vaccine than any islander.”
The buzz of conversation that followed this comment was cut short by Stacey, who said in a tight, pained voice that matched her face, “You know who you are, and when you are caught we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.” As she hurriedly turned toward the kitchen her face seemed to collapse in on itself as if the weight of the world was just too much. She seemed so alone and vulnerable. I wondered if she counted any of the people present as her friend. She seemed like she could use one.
Darcy interrupted my thoughts to say that he and Martha would be back in a minute; he had to show her something before showing us to our cabin. It never ceased to amaze me at how fast Martha could make friends, and have them eating out of her hands. But I’d had about enough excitement for one day and they were gone longer than I wanted. Finally, Darcy led Martha and me back into the no-see-ums, down the stairs, and then over to a little cabin tucked in between two honking big live oaks. Martha was lugging her huge suitcase behind her and was breathing heavily by the time we got to the cabin. It was even tinier than it looked. There was just enough room for two beds and a night table, one chest of drawers, a desk, and a chair. No washroom. As if reading my mind, Darcy, who was standing in the doorway, said, “They skimped on the bathrooms. The woman’s is one over from the mess stairs.” He laughed. “Just don’t get the trots.”
Martha rolled her eyes as Darcy pushed past us, plunked himself down on one of the beds, and bounced up and down. “At least the mattresses in this cabin are okay.” Which gave me visions of lumpy pretzel mattresses that sagged and smelled in some of the other cabins. I wondered who got those.
“So what’s all this about the vaccine being s
tolen?” I asked.
“Tempest in a teapot. Wyatt probably just misplaced it. Or maybe he didn’t bring as much as he thought he had. It’ll quiet down. It always does.”
He got up from the bed and I wondered why he seemed so sure — or was he? He actually seemed a bit too glib. And what was this always does all about?
“Is Wyatt a regular?” I asked.
Darcy laughed. “No, he’s here on a working vacation. He’s a first timer angling to be a last timer, judging by his attitude. He’s not a researcher and he likes to make that pretty clear. He’s a prickly guy, always complaining about something. And he and Jayne are always goading each other.”
“Who’s Jayne?” I asked.
“She’s our turtle lady. Does research on sea turtles. She used to be the director until she retired and Stacey took over. Everybody said it was because Jayne burned out. Too bad really — at least for Jayne. I think she genuinely liked being director.”
“And Stacey doesn’t?”
He cocked his head at me and smiled. “Did I say that?”
When I didn’t say anything he got up off the bed and said, “Breakfast is at 7:30. Don’t be late or you won’t get anything.” And with that he was gone.
It didn’t take long for me to unpack. I sat on my bed and watched Martha trying to stuff all her clothes into two of the four drawers. I finally took pity on her and gave her one of mine. However, the suitcase and the remainder of her clothes we had to leave between the two beds because there was nowhere else to put them.
“What did you think of Darcy?” I asked innocently.
“Salesman par excellence,” said Martha and laughed.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. The guy everyone loves because he makes you feel good. So what is he doing as an assistant to a botanist, of all things?”
“He’s young. Couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Maybe he’s just trying out his wings. After all, if he can ingratiate himself with this ragtag bunch of people he’d make a hell of an event planner,” said Martha.
“Or maybe there’s more to it than that.”
“Oh, Cordi, there you go, glass half empty. How can you read anything negative in Darcy? And why ever would you want to? He’s a gem.”
I stared at Martha, realizing that she had a point. Except that ever since I had stepped on this island I had felt like I was in a glass house. One move and it would all shatter around me in so many lethal shards. I shivered. It was a weird sensation and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Good lord, Cordi. How can you be cold in weather like this?” She slung an unfamiliar camera over her shoulder and headed for the door, followed by my raised eyebrow. “Darcy lent me a night-vision camera. I have to check it out.” It didn’t seem to matter to her that it wasn’t dark outside yet.
I lay in bed for a long time, listening to the sounds of the woods and the chirruping of frogs, until I finally fell asleep to the wind whispering through the trees.
I was jerked awake by the sound of firecrackers going off. After I picked myself up from where I had plastered myself to the ground, I traced the unearthly racket back to Martha, who was snoring shotguns on every breath in. Too bad she couldn’t be as quiet sleeping as she obviously was coming home from her photography junket. The one other time I’d spent the night with Martha I hadn’t remembered that she snored. Must be a new thing, I thought.
After that I didn’t sleep much, and by the time I’d watched my clock tick through from 3:00 to 5:00 I’d had enough. The darkness had given way to dawn and I could just make out the trunk of the oak outside my window. I took my time getting dressed and then fished out my flashlight and tiptoed out the door, though why I bothered to be quiet I don’t know. Martha was making more noise than I ever could.
Because my cabin, along with all the others, had been built at the base of a dune line it felt as though I was in a valley as I walked outside, a valley with hills covered in palmetto — a miniature palm tree, three or four feet high, with fingered fronds just like the bigger palms, hence palmetto or “little palm.” As I stood there, looking up the side of the enormous dune upon which the main building stood, I saw the pale grey of early morning topping the rise, peeking out between the latticework of the oak branches. Everywhere I looked were live oaks, wispy pale green strands of hanging moss clinging to their branches like hair.
“You’re up early.”
I spun around at the sound of the voice, my heart racing. In the dim light he was hard to make out. His jet-black hair was tied back now and he was dressed as if for a fall day, with a long-sleeved black shirt buttoned right to the neck, like a nerd. And like a nerd his trouser legs were tucked into his socks. As he came closer I caught the distinct smell of perfume. I thought I must be mistaken, but when he stopped in front of me all I could smell was the scent of a woman’s cologne. I don’t like to think I’m prejudiced but I almost took one step back because it was so unexpected.
“My name’s Sam,” he said and held out his hand. It was gnarled and calloused, a working man’s hand. Definitely not the hand of a man who wears women’s perfume.
I gripped it and said, “Cordi.”
I could see now that he had a mist net slung over his shoulder and he was carrying a yellow toolbox with the black silhouette of a bat stamped on its top. Not a bird man then.
“Bats?” I asked.
He smiled. “You got it. I’m studying the parasites of the big brown bat.”
I wondered what it said about the man that he had chosen a nocturnal mammal to study. When everyone else was asleep he would be awake and vice versa. A man who either did not need the company of other people or a man living his life as an outcast, but not by choice. Of course, there was a third possibility that Martha would definitely point out to me had she been there: a man simply doing research on an animal he found irresistible.
“Do you mist net them at their roost?” I asked as I eyeballed the net over his shoulder. Mist nets are gossamer- thin nets used to capture birds, and in this case bats, so that they can be tagged and their behaviour studied.
He shifted the mist net on his shoulder. “The area around the roost is the easiest place to capture them as they leave to go hunting for the night, or come back in the morning, but there’s a danger of catching too many. I’ll show you if you want? It’s not far from here.”
His vehicle was a modified golf cart with a two-person front seat, and I settled in beside him as the engine coughed to life. I imagined many hearts in the various cabins jumping to attention at the sound of that motor and hoped that none of them were weak. We drove out of what Darcy had called the clearing — the more-or-less empty area that surrounded the research station on three sides — and down the leaf-lined, sandy road through a tunnel of trees. It was still dark here, but when I looked up the sky was turning blue.
The road wound its way through the forest, the wheels leaving no marks on the compacted sand. Sam pulled into a dent in the forest and got out of the cart. I followed and he led me along a sandy path, palmetto encroaching on all sides and overhead the ubiquitous oaks. And then we broke out into the open.
“Beach is just over that dune line,” he said. But I wasn’t looking at that. I was looking at the burnt-out wreck of an abandoned building, its skeleton and intact roof still reaching for the sky as sand from a naked sand dune spilled down into its foundation like the sand from an hourglass finally set free.
“We’ve missed them. They’ve already come home.”
I looked at the building and wondered who had once made their home here, besides the bats. There was a sign hanging by one black chain at the front door that said HUNTER’S and I could almost imagine the laughter and the fun they had once had here.
“C’mon — we might just catch the sunrise.” Sam was striding past the building and into the valley between two dunes. I had to run to keep up. And then there it was.
We topped a dune and the beach stretched in both directions, vast and mysterious, primeval, white, and emp
ty of human life. And into the midst of this incredible beauty the sun had risen just above the ocean’s horizon, red and distinct as if someone had cut a hole in the sky to let it shine through. But it wasn’t shining yet. It was still blood red and flat, and you could look at it without hurting your eyes. It all seemed out of time. This is what it could have been like millions of years ago, when some other creature stood here and looked at the sun.
We didn’t say anything. We just stared at the red ball as it turned into an orange orb of flame, at the blue of the sea and the jagged crests of the waves, at the shifting sands and the pelicans flying low to the water. Surely such moments as these are what we live for, what keeps us going until the next one? You share something like that with a stranger and they are strangers no longer.
In silence we walked down to the water’s edge, the white sand now stained dark by the sea — the tide was going out. I turned and looked back at where we had come from but there was no sign of Hunter’s, just the dazzling white of the dunes marching inward to be clothed by trees. I looked all down the shoreline and there weren’t any cottages to be seen from the beach. It felt as though we were the only two people on the entire island — in the entire world.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” said Sam. “It seems incredible that such an eclectic bunch of islanders could get together and agree on how to conserve this island so well.”
Dying for Murder Page 3
