Island Blues (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

“Oh, fancy meeting you here,” Sabrina said. Calvin was clamoring at the top of his lungs.

“What in God's name are you doing?” Michael Siderius shouted over the bird's squawks. He stood at the edge of the water with an enraged expression on his face, embellished by his red, swollen nose.

The rest of them were there as well. Patti, Sophie, and Dennis huddled together and stared at them in disbelief, Walter and Lance stood apart, looking irritated, and Joseph Siderius was inspecting a spot on the horizon.

“Lima and I were out for a nice kayak ride when we saw this beautiful beach. We decided to stop for a swim,” Sabrina said, ignoring the fact that they were fully clothed, and that Lima was in a clown suit to boot. “If you'll excuse me, I need to go capture our kayaks.”

She began wading after the kayaks, splashing water on her shoulders to show how much she was enjoying herself, and earning another strident reprimand from Calvin. When she got back with the kayaks in tow, Lima was saying, “It's an island tradition to dunk a clown at the start of the season. Sabrina didn't want to tell you she'd been picked for this singular honor, but it's true. We've ensured good luck for the island for the next year. Well, here she is with the kayaks. Ta-da!”

Sabrina and Lima got onto the kayaks and paddled off before anybody thought to say a word.

What could they say, anyway?

***

“Pssst! Hey you!”

Sabrina looked around, but the hall was empty except for the sounds of hammering. She was pretty sure she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. She thought the Shell Lodge's laundry was down this hall, but the sound of hammering was discouraging, unless the laundress had taken to beating the dirt out of the hotel's sheets and towels.

Sabrina just wanted to find the laundry and exchange her wet clothes for a bathrobe. When Matt saw her come into the lobby soaking wet again, he shook his head in disbelief and mouthed “laundry” before turning back to a customer. That paled in comparison to Sam's reaction when she and Lima returned to the dock. He was still laughing as she and Lima made their way up to the parking lot where she handed over the keys to her station wagon to Lima.

At least Lima was on his way home—Sabrina didn't like how exhausted her friend had looked—taking Calvin with him. Lima would grumble about having to watch the tiny bird, but Sabrina knew he adored Calvin. She would pick Calvin and her car up on her way home, and check on Lima.

“Pssst! Hey! Come here!”

Sabrina looked around again, but didn't see anyone until a head, resembling a large brown-spotted egg, popped out from behind a nearby doorsill and a withered hand beckoned for her to come closer.

“Please?” Sabrina ventured a step toward the door, but the man had disappeared again. Sabrina sighed. Her clothes were starting to chafe as the cloth stiffened with drying salt, but she was unable to turn off her curiosity long enough to walk away. She went to the doorway and knocked on the half-open door. A hand shot out and pulled her inside a dark room, slamming the door shut.

“What—”

“Shush!”

Sabrina shut her mouth, wondering as she did so why she didn't feel threatened. Perhaps it was the one glimpse she had of the small, ancient man who had kidnapped her. It was hard to feel threatened by a person who looked like he would blow away if she sneezed.

A flashlight popped on and was directed into her eyes. “I need a witness. You'll do,” said a crackling, whistling voice, and she felt a small hand clasp around her arm. She was pulled with surprising force across the dim room. Her eyes were adjusting now, and she could make out tables and chairs stacked against the wall, and shelves of what looked like table linen. Some sort of storeroom, then. What she couldn't make out, though, was why her kidnapper was pulling a small wooden cart as he led her toward the opposite side of the room.

“Almost there, almost there.” Then he cursed as his cart got hung up on the leg of a chair.

“Would you mind telling me your name and what we are doing?” Sabrina stumbled over a large box, producing an ominous breaking noise. Dishes?

“I'm Guy Fredericks, but I don't particularly care who you are. I just need a witness.”

“A witness to what?”

The cart came unstuck at last, and grumbling, Guy Fredericks dragged her toward a door outlined by bright light. He pushed it open a crack and peered through the opening, and then looked over his shoulder at Sabrina.

“Well? What are you waiting for?”

Sabrina maneuvered around the cart so she could see. She was looking into a large, empty ballroom. Arched, fanciful windows drew in abundant sunshine, which illuminated the polished wood floors and white walls patterned with small shell designs. Real shells adorned window frames and the massive fireplace at the end of the room.

“See? See?” Guy said, his breath whistling with excitement.

Sabrina saw, but failed to grasp its importance. There were two workmen on the opposite side of the room, working on what appeared to be a hole in the wall. One was reaching inside the wall, while the other one leaned forward for a closer look.

“They think they're going to get away with it!” Guy cackled. “But they're not, not with you here!”

Sabrina began to have a bad feeling about this whole thing.

The workman with his arm in the wall looked surprised and said something to his companion. Then he pulled out what looked like an oversized wooden drawer.

“Hee, hee, hee,” squealed Guy.

Both of the men looked inside the drawer, and then the first one reached in and pulled out a bottle.

“Get him!” Guy shouted and pushed Sabrina through the door. “Don't let him get away with it!”

Sabrina fell through the door into the bright ballroom, wondering how in the world she got herself into these things.

“Stop,” she called forcefully, “in the name of the Comico Island Ombudsman's office!”

Chapter Twenty-eight

“Grandpa Guy knows where every rum-running hole in the lodge is hidden. I'm always finding old bottles under his bed, but he won't tell me where he gets them. He must have seen the workmen today and thought they were trying to steal his stash in that secret drawer. Of course, they were just fixing some water damage, but Grandpa didn't know that.” Matt Fredericks looked across at his grandfather, who was happily engaged in blowing up his enemy's boats in a rousing game of Battleship.

“He had me convinced they were stealing something,” Sabrina said. She hoped the workmen wouldn't tell Matt how she came charging across the room, flashing her old movie rental card at them. It was gold, and she thought they might mistake it for a badge.

They hadn't.

“She stopped them, Matt my boy, stopped them from robbing the bank.” Guy looked up from his game and nodded in appreciation at Sabrina.

That he had disappeared, leaving Sabrina to confront the workmen, did not help matters. It wasn't until Sabrina, clutching the evidence in the form of a prohibition-era liquor bottle, had marched the two protesting men down to the lobby that things became clearer. It took Matt only a few minutes to deduce that his grandfather was behind the whole fiasco. He apologized to the workmen and escorted Sabrina to Guy's room.

“Grandpa pretty much lives in the past now,” Matt said. “Grandpa Guy, what year is it?”

“Nineteen twenty-eight,” Guy said promptly. “You make sure you stay out of Mama's way. She's out there sticking shells into the steps and if you step on it and mess it up, she cries. She cries when Daddy doesn't come home at night too, and sometimes I see her sticking shells into the walls in the middle of the night. Don't like to see her cry.” Guy turned moodily back to his game.

“For a while he was in the fifties, but he's been stuck in the twenties for a couple of years now. That's when the bottles started appearing.”

Guy looked up from his game and wheezed a cackle. Sabrina had discovered that the small wooden cart Guy carted around was to hold his oxygen tank. He had emphysema, and Matt said he abandoned the fancy roller the oxygen tank had come with, in favor of a rickety, wooden garden cart.

“I went to work on one of William McCoy's ships a couple of times,” Guy said, and paused to cough for what seemed like forever. “Out there behind the Rum Line, with nigh on $200,000 worth of liquor on board. Bill used to be a boat builder in Daytona, until he decided to start running rum, and it was him who came up with the idea of the rum rows. That way his ships were safe and secure behind the territorial line where the Coast Guard couldn't get to him, and the smaller boats ran back and forth between his boat and shore, avoiding the Coast Guard the best they could. I heard that up in New York, they'd have sixty or more boats on rum row, and some of them with banners out advertising their wares, and prostitutes on board to entice the buyers. We never had anything like that off Comico, but it was impressive enough, let me tell you.

“Dad thought it would be a good way for me to get to know the business, so he asked Bill McCoy if I could help load Johnny Walker Red and Bacardi onto the speedboats that would run for the shore. And those boats were something else, let me tell you! Some of them were fitted with aircraft engines, machine guns and armor plating, and they kept cans of oil handy to pour on the hot exhaust manifolds to create a smoke screen when the Coasties got too close. You had to be careful of the pirates, though. We caught one sneaky bastard who was waiting to signal his crew to come aboard and rob us blind, but we caught him and sent him on the next ship to Bermuda. Dad caught 'em sneaking around the lodge sometimes, too, and boy, he knew what to do with them. Nobody ever saw them again. Didn't pay to cross Dad.

“Those pirates, they could be anywhere. They're here now, you know, after my stash. Caught one sneaking around the other night. Scared him silly when he saw me.”

“Grandpa, are you sure you didn't just catch the maid in your room again? Remember, I told you Rosie comes in every day to clean your room. I wish you wouldn't hide behind the door and jump out at her, or set booby traps. It took me forever to find a replacement when the last one quit.” Matt looked beleaguered.

“And that man,” Guy continued, ignoring Matt, “coming around and asking all those questions. Thinks I'm stupid, thinks I'm going to tell him everything I know about Dad's business, just because he played a game with me. I sunk all his battleships and showed him the door.”

“Mr. Olgivie is just being nice, Grandpa. He's not going to want to play any more games with you if you're rude to him.” Matt turned to Sabrina. “Walter Olgivie has been playing Battleship with Grandpa.”

“Walter?” Sabrina tried to imagine the wealthy, self-absorbed businessman taking the time to play a game with a senile old man. “That doesn't sound like something Walter would do if you held a gun to his head.”

Matt looked defensive. “I thought it was very nice of him.”

“What do you two talk about, Guy?” Sabrina asked.

“Women and drink.” Guy winked at Sabrina. “I told him about the house over in Waver Town where all you have to do is wave a few dollars in the window, and you can—”

“Go back to your game, Grandpa. I'll come by later and play with you.” Matt steered Sabrina out of the room before she could ask any other questions. “We need to get you to the laundry. You may want to think about taking up another sport, Sabrina. You don't seem to be getting the hang of kayaking.”

“I thought I was doing good!” Sabrina clamped her mouth shut, though, when she realized it was better to let Matt think her utterly incompetent at kayaking than try to explain what had gone on at Rainbow Island. She didn't relish running into the Hummers when they returned from the island, which should be soon.

“I'll skip the laundry, I think. My clothes are almost dry at this point.” Wrinkled and stiff, perhaps, but pretty much dry.

“Perhaps I can lend you a comb?”

Sabrina didn't have the heart to tell him that a comb wouldn't do a lick of good at this point. She needed a hair transplant to remove the boisterous tangles from her curls.

“Why is Walter Olgivie pumping Guy for information? Don't you find that odd?”

As he walked, Matt was running his finger over a windowsill to check for dust. He looked up, startled. “I seriously doubt
that.
Believe me, Grandpa Guy has a very vivid imagination. Lately, he thinks everybody is after his stash, but you have to remember that he doesn't have a stash. He was still a kid when prohibition ended.”

“But Guy knows something, or how else would he have known the workmen were about to run across that secret drawer today?”

The bottle the workmen had found was empty, just an illegal crud of dried 1920's liquor in the bottom of the bottle. But what else might be hidden in the lodge's various hiding holes? Something in which Walter Olgivie was interested, Sabrina suspected. Why else would he be playing Battleship with Guy? Not out of the generosity of that cold heart, that was for sure.

“Oh! So much has happened, I almost forgot. There's a man staying here, a big, bald man in the leather jacket. I saw him—” Too late, Sabrina realized she was about to reveal what happened at Rainbow Island that morning. She suspected the truth would be out of the bag once the Hummers returned home, but she could hope, couldn't she? But she needed to warn Matt about the man.

Matt's look was quizzical. “Fred Young?”

“Is that his name? I saw him, er, sneaking around the Hummers last night. With what happened to Sophie, I thought it disturbing. You may want to keep an eye on him.”

Matt frowned. “I will.”

“I'm wondering if maybe he isn't a reporter.”

“A reporter? But that doesn't make any sense. Fred Young's been here all week. How did he find out about—” He stopped suddenly.

“Dennis Parker? I take it you haven't seen the papers today. The secret is out of the bag. Everyone knows he's here.”

Matt shook his head. “I told Michael and Dennis that it would be impossible to keep his presence here a secret, especially after what happened to Gilbert. But I promised to try.”

“Well, you did a good job. I didn't know who he was.” Sabrina tried to keep her voice dry and matter-of-fact.

They'd reached the lobby and Matt raised a distracted hand before making a beeline for the front desk.

She glanced at her watch and saw that the Hummers should be arriving back right about now. Though she cringed at the very thought of seeing them, she needed to get it over with.

***

On the way down the path to the marina, Sabrina tried out a few lines. One was, “Oh, you must have met my twin sister, Serena.” Another was, “Sorry about the disturbance, the old man keeps escaping from the home.” Blaming it all on Lima was very appealing, but Sabrina didn't think either idea was going to fly.

She was saved from any immediate excuse-making, because as she reached the marina she saw that she had missed the Hummers' return. They had already scattered to their rooms.

Except for one.

As she turned back up the path, she heard a man shouting. She followed his voice to a small gazebo overlooking the cove, where he stood with one imperious foot on a bench as he talked loud and fast into his minuscule cell phone.

“Tom, you tell them if they don't quit all this talk about plumbing and roof repair that I'm going to kick every last one of them out of the building. Maybe I'll tear down the whole damn building, how does that sound? Can't worry about a few bugs and rodents if you don't even have a roof over your head, now can you? You tell them that, Tom, do you hear me?”

Walter Olgivie looked up and saw Sabrina standing nearby. He clicked his phone shut.

“Now you've taken to eavesdropping, as well as spying, have you?”