Island Blues (13 page)

A few minutes later, feeling considerably relieved, Sabrina went back out into the night. As she walked around the side of the hotel, she was alert for any noise or movement, which was why she heard the faint sound of arguing voices.

She stopped and strained to hear, but the voices were indistinct. Somebody was arguing, though, there was no doubt about that. Sabrina hesitated only a moment before plunging back down the dark path away from her car. She comforted herself with the thought that she had been wandering these walkways all evening without ill-effects. A few more minutes couldn't hurt.

The voices became louder as she moved down the path, and she tried to keep her footsteps as noiseless as possible.

Just then she heard Michael Siderius' voice as clear as if he was standing next to her.

“Did you do it?” The words were not very loud, but angry, falling somewhere between a hissing whisper and an irate yell. “You did, didn't you?”

There was a response, but Sabrina could not make out the words, or even the gender of the speaker. As she continued on toward Michael and his unseen companion, she heard more words, but nothing she could distinguish. She wasn't even sure if it was Michael or the other person speaking. Then came the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh.

By the time Sabrina rushed around the last curve of the path, Michael was standing in the clearing by himself, blood streaming down his face.

Chapter Twenty-four

The fact that Patti Townsend was not a morning person did not prevent her from opening a coffee shop. She always wanted to run her own business, ever since she was a little girl and sat in the corner of the shop where her mother cut hair. She swore then that one day she would be the boss, and that no one would tell her what to do and make her cry when she got home after a hard day's work.

Day after day spent selling shoes in a shop on Beechmont Avenue and watching people bring their own coffee cups from home convinced her that the stretch of street needed a coffee shop. When the storefront next to the shoe store went up for lease, she was ready to go to her bank with a business plan.

She was ecstatic when they approved the loan for a fun, quirky coffee shop that specialized in friendly, quick service.

Still, not having to get up at four in the morning was a rare luxury she was determined to enjoy. She had not been on a vacation in the five years since she opened the store, and she still felt guilty about being away. But her manager was her sister, with her mother as backup, and there were not two more competent people on the face of this earth. And she needed this time away, needed it badly. If she didn't get this Hum thing straightened out, she was afraid she might lose the shop. It was so hard to concentrate!

Sometimes it felt like her head was going to explode, and it was enough to drive a person crazy. She couldn't focus, couldn't sleep, and she'd actually snapped at a few of her regulars. She apologized immediately, of course, but it was still not acceptable. She needed to get this thing taken care of, and fast. Lucille's lawsuit was just icing on the cake. Patti had thought about leaving the retreat when her sister called to tell her about the lawsuit, but there wasn't anything she could do right away. It was far more important to get rid of this Hum in her head than talk to a jealous maniac who was determined to get even with her for a long-ago high school feud. For God's sake, get over it, Patti wanted to tell the woman, but there was no reasoning with Lucille. Thus, the lawsuit.

Patti glanced at the clock and groaned. She should be feeling decadent and well-rested; after all, she'd slept in until almost nine o'clock. Instead, she felt gritty and exhausted. It's hard to sleep when it feels like your pillow is vibrating all night long, and even tranquilizers didn't help. She'd taken so many of them one night that she got scared and made herself vomit, afraid she was going to overdose.

But it was time to get up. They were meeting at ten to take a boat over to some island for this morning's session. She was dreading it, as usual. The whole thing was horrible, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that at the end of this week she would be rid of the Hum forever. So if she had to go to these sessions, and pretend that she believed in a voice of the universe, so be it. Anything was worth getting rid of this Hum.

Patti swung her feet over the side of the bed, and stood. She needed to check on Sophie. She'd offered to stay with her last night, but the girl had shown surprising backbone and insisted that she would not let the attack affect her life. Patti knew taking on a stray puppy when she had so much else going on in her life was ludicrous, but she couldn't seem to help herself. Sophie seemed so needy, and Patti had never been good at saying no to needy people. No matter how bad things were, Patti reminded herself, her mother used to keep quarters in her pockets to drop in the cups of the homeless people. Patti could do no less.

She reached the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, once again astonished at the depths she had reached. She heard somewhere that aluminum foil might block electromagnetic noise, and it seemed reasonable, didn't it? At this point, Patti was willing to try anything.

She reached up and removed the aluminum foil hat and placed it carefully on the bathroom counter.

She might need it again tonight.

***

Sophie hung up the phone and looked down at her toenails. They looked pretty, not too messy, and she felt proud of herself. She hadn't painted her own toenails since she was a kid, before her mother dragged her to New York for an interview with the talent agency. She tried to tell her mother she didn't want to miss her first year of high school, but her mother told her to stop whining, and smile for the camera. Didn't she want to make her father proud? Was she so selfish she was going to say no to a few extra bucks that their family could use to buy a new house and car?

So Sophie smiled. After a couple years, she smiled so much and so well that she had made it onto the covers of some of the nation's top fashion magazines. Her mother was there every step of the way, screaming at everyone on the set and bullying the photographers. Sophie didn't have to do anything but smile, and that's what she did, year after year, while her mother grew fatter. In direct inverse relation to her mother's enormous weight gain, Sophie grew skinnier. But that was great, because skinny was in, and Sophie only grew more popular. And Sophie found that no one really listened to what she said, so she soon found passive-aggressive pleasure in mangling people's names and saying outrageous things.

Sophie wiggled her toes and put the earplugs from her iPod back into her ears. Listening to the Dixie Chicks sing about a jerk named Earl went a little way toward blocking out the buzz in her head, though not by much. She wondered what her mother would say if she knew Sophie blew off a gig with
Glamour
magazine to come to Comico Island, and then felt a burst of joy at the traitorous realization that she really didn't care. The blow-up had come three months ago, when Sophie told her mother she was going to break up with Shane. Her mother was horrified. Was she crazy? Shane Ludrow was the most popular teen idol since Johnny Depp.

But Sophie was serious this time, and to both of their astonishment, she told her mother she could leave if she didn't like it. Her mother did, certain that Sophie would call the next day, begging her to return.

Sophie never did. She felt like a heavy, smothering mink coat had been removed from her shoulders, and she reveled in the feeling. Then the Hum started, and she hadn't been able to enjoy anything since.

Just thinking about Shane made Sophie sick to her stomach. Her eyes flew to the door and windows, which she knew were locked, since she had checked them herself twenty or thirty times. The images from her attack came rushing back from the cellar in her mind where she had banished them. She was good at not thinking about things, but the Hum made it harder to lock the memories in the safe room again.

After a moment, Sophie got up and went to look in her closet. It was almost time to go to the dock to meet for this morning's session. Sophie wasn't looking forward to the session, but she really, truly thought they were working. The Hum seemed to be lessening, and that was worth any price. She knew Patti thought Master Joseph and his voice of the universe were silly, but Sophie saw the sincerity in Master Joseph's eyes. He was a good person, and he was going to help her.

Patti was a good person, too. It was sweet of her to call to check on Sophie, and to offer to walk her down to the dock. She wished Patti were her mother. How differently things might have turned out for her!

Sophie pulled out a designer shirt and blue jeans, indifferent to the fact that the clothes she received free, on the off chance she might be photographed wearing them, were worth a small fortune. She wanted to look great today, for Dennis.

She turned up the music on her iPod and concentrated on not thinking about anything.

***

Lance Mayhew massaged his hand as he walked down the shell path toward the docks. He was early, but he was compulsively early for everything. It was one of the things that his ex-wife disliked about him most, which was funny, since Lance hated
her
for much more concrete reasons. She was a slob, a bad mother, and a drunk. That she was perpetually late for even the most important appointments was just another facet of her already badly flawed character.

But she'd given him Melinda and Kobie, and for that he was prepared to forgive a lot. Melinda was his sweet little girl, never mind that she'd switched out pink tutus and ballet shoes for the grungy jeans and tees that were so popular nowadays, and was prone to saying “Daaaddd” in that uniquely teenage tone that conveyed profound disgust. In rare moments she still smiled that radiant, beautiful smile and told him she loved him. And Kobie, Kobie was great. He hadn't gotten old enough yet to despise his old dad, and the two of them could talk for hours about the latest computer viruses and the hottest new processors.

Lance missed his two children. He had just got off the phone with them and could tell their mother was at it again. She did it every time she had the children, which was seldom enough, but still damaging. Little comments about him, and how stupid he was, and how much better things would be if they lived with her. Melinda could go out on dates with her new boyfriend, and Kobie could have the best computer on the market, the one his father couldn't afford. Little things, like barbed hooks in their souls. How cool was it to have a mother who had won the lottery? When they got back from their visits with her, they looked around his small house with disdain, and looked at him with suspicion, as if they now questioned every word out of his mouth.

He resisted the urge to smash his hand into a nearby tree. Now he had this noise in his head to contend with as well. When it first started, he unplugged every appliance in the house trying to discover the source of the annoying buzz. When that didn't stop it, he drove around town, trying to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. It was natural for him to turn to the Internet for help after that, and he found a plethora of information.

At first he resisted the Hummers International website, after an initial read-through revealed the group's belief that the Hum was the voice of the universe. It sounded so hokey. He cruised the other websites, discovering that the Hum had been reported as early as the nineteenth century, described as a “swarm of bees,” and that incidents of the Hum appeared in the nineteen seventies in the UK, but not until the nineties in the United States. He learned about “electromagnetic radiation” and “TACAMO,” which stood for “Take Charge and Move Out” and referred to aircraft that were used to relay messages to submarines. Could these aircraft be causing the Hum? No one knew.

He joined an online group of people claiming to hear the Hum, and experimented with many of their suggestions. He'd tried a water helmet, a Cathedral crypt, a cave deep underground, and, one desperate night, he'd even tried climbing in the refrigerator in his garage. Anything to shield himself from whatever was bombarding his head with ambient noise.

But nothing worked, and eventually he found himself drawn back to the Hummers International website. After all, they promised a cure for the Hum, which no one else did. Did he really care if they couched their promise in a lot of mumbo-jumbo? If it worked, it really didn't matter how it worked.

Now, of course, he knew better.

But regret couldn't extricate him from this situation. Nothing could.

***

As Walter Olgivie came down the path toward the dock, he saw Lance in front of him, but saw no reason to quicken his step to catch up with the sullen man. Walter didn't have any desire to deal with a morose Lance Mayhew. The man was like a constant downer. Walter spent a lot of money to look and feel great, and he saw no reason to expose himself to such constant negativity.

Of course, keeping a positive flow of energy was difficult lately. The Hum was one thing that money did not seem to alleviate. No matter how many doctors he consulted, the electrotherapy he endured, and psychics he consulted, nothing seemed to make a dent in the droning in his head. It was damn near unbearable. He'd taken to clipping a fan to his bed, finding that the constant noise helped relieve the worst of the symptoms. At home, he'd even bought an air mattress and slept in his kitchen next to the refrigerator when the noise got too bad.

But he was determined to use the trip to this godforsaken island to his advantage. Walter didn't see any reason not to use everything to his advantage, and it surprised him that other people did not see opportunities the way he did. While he was still in college, he bought his first apartment building. He fixed it up enough to avoid the building inspector's condemnation and rented it out to a bunch of numbnuts who were willing to pay good money to live in a roach-infested hellhole. He didn't stop there, and made his first million by the time he graduated college. He seemed to have a knack for seeing money signs where no one else did. Or maybe he just had the nerve to follow his instincts. He wasn't sure which, and he really didn't care. As long as he was making money hand over fist, he didn't care about all the poor shmucks who didn't share his gift.

He'd gotten a little bored of late, though. Money had somehow ceased to inspire him. Now it was the hunt, finding something special where nobody else saw value and snatching it up. The island had surprising possibilities, and Walter didn't see any reason not to pursue this game on the side.

Of course, now he had to get through another one of these highly unpleasant sessions. Speaking of unpleasant, there was Michael Siderius standing on the dock, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses and talking with Patti and the beautiful Sophie.

As Walter drew closer, he noticed that Michael was sporting a broken nose.

Walter smiled and quickened his pace.

***

Dennis Parker jogged up to the dock, trying to act like he wasn't watching Sophie smile wanly at something Michael Siderius was saying. He quelled an instant surge of jealousy. He didn't like the looks Michael sent Sophie's way, or the many opportunities the man found to touch her.

Dennis had no right to feel jealous, no matter how strong his feelings for Sophie. He had no idea if she reciprocated, and there was something fragile about her that made him hesitate. Not that he ever was a lady's man, like some of the guys he knew. They teased him about it sometimes, but he didn't care. His mom and dad had been together since they married at eighteen, and had shown five strong, independent boys how a marriage was supposed to work. Dennis had seen the real thing, and he didn't plan to settle for less.