Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics (4 page)

Chapter
6.

The boat bounced across the waves as it tore through the Pacific Ocean, heading for a little island
that was a nothing more than a blue-gray smudge on the horizon west of Maui and south of Molokai. The salt spray that misted Phoebe’s face after every bone-jarring jolt was a welcome relief from the hot, bright sun that glinted off the water in a million merciless and blinding silver flashes.

The engine noise made it hard to carry on a conversation, but as they crossed the open sea between the islands, the boat pilot pointed out porpoises at play.
Unfortunately Phoebe wasn’t in a position to slow down and enjoy the creatures’ charming show. She wasn’t here on vacation. This was work.

Phoebe looked toward the indistinct lump jutting o
ut of the sea in the distance. She’d used her smart phone to read about Lani and knew it was the smallest publicly accessible inhabited island in the chain. It was nicknamed
The Pineapple Island
. She shouted to ask the boat captain what it was like and he hollered back, “Not much there, not even a traffic light.”

Historically the island of Lanai wasn’t very appealing. It had
a bad reputation, to say the least. Originally it was considered unlivable on account of being haunted by man-eating spirits, so it stood uninhabited for ages. But a desperate Polynesian prince was forced to live there after he was banished from all the islands that weren’t haunted.

Y
ears later there’d been a genocide carried out on the tiny dot of land, so if it hadn’t been haunted before, it probably was after that. Mormons lived there for a while, then it was a ranch. Then, in the 1930s, the pile of dirt was repurposed as the world’s largest pineapple plantation.

Even
on a good day working with pineapple was brutal, what with the heat, unrelenting sun, prickly rind, and sharp saw-tooth edges on the leaves. It wasn’t as bad as man-eating spirits or genocide, but Phoebe suspected it was body and soul destroying labor.

Gradually
transportation and standards of living improved to the point that the island was turned in a super-luxurious resort that featured two high-end hotels. The Four Seasons ran both the Resort at Manele Bay and a Lodge at Koele. In 2012 computer magnate, Larry Ellison of Oracle, bought ninety-eight percent of the island for hundreds of million of dollars and spent more hundreds of millions spiffing it up. Apparently it was a
really
nice place now. Bill Gates chose the Lodge for his wedding.

Phoebe wasn’t going to either of the 5-star hotels, however. She’d be staying at the
Hotel Lanai, the first and only hotel on the island until 1990. It was an eleven-room B & B built to house the Dole executives when they came out to check on their pineapples.

Phoebe wa
s still thinking of pineapples when the captain pulled up to a small dock and helped Phoebe and her luggage off the boat. A white Jeep Wrangler was sitting in the otherwise empty parking lot adjacent to the dock. She got in and found the keys under the mat as promised. A map of the island was on the passenger seat. She gave a thumbs up to the boat pilot, he smiled and waved, then turned around and headed back to Maui.

Phoebe unfolded t
he map and studied it. There were just a handful of roads on the island. Only a few were paved, thus the need for a four-wheel drive vehicle. She figured out where she was, located the boarding house, and set off up a steep road toward the center of the island. She was at the hotel in less than five minutes.

The rooms were simple, clean, airy, and decorated in a modest homey style with distinctive Hawaiian quilts on the bed
s. It had been an exhausting day of travel, fourteen hours counting the layovers. She’d been in a car, three airplanes, two airport trams, two shuttle buses, a boat, and a Jeep.

White Oak, Tennessee was 4,500 miles from Lanai City. It had taken less than a day
to get there, but only because the day was continuously and unnaturally elongated as she jetted west. Right now it was still afternoon in Hawaii, but was six hours later in Tennessee. Phoebe threw herself down on the bed, intending to doze for only a few minutes, but went sound asleep instead.

After
ninety minutes of near coma, she woke up and staggered to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face until she felt awake enough to drive again. She consulted her map, looking for the place where she was supposed to pick up the Professor. It was near the beach at the end of a long dirt road through what looked to be a barren, empty zone.

Only
now did it occur to her to question why she’d had to come all this way to pick the guy up. This little rendezvous on Pineapple Island added 9,000 miles to her travels. Couldn’t they have met up in New York? Maybe the Boss thought she’d enjoy getting to see Hawaii. He was right of course. It was wonderful. But how long would she be here? She thought about it and realized she’d be in the air flying to and fro longer than she’d be in Hawaii!

* * *

Phoebe drove away from the tiny jungle town heading toward what looked like a No Man’s Land, or a Hawaiian Empty Quarter. In about three minutes the pavement ended and became a dirt road. She slowed down to about fifteen miles an hour as she passed through an expanse filled with boulders and bright orange-red dirt. There was almost no vegetation. Then she came to an area where randomly placed vertical stacks of small stones lined both sides of the road.

The stones were obviously chosen with a preference for naturally flattened shapes to make
it possible to stack them. They were anywhere from the size of a Frisbee to a pebble, piled one atop the other in teetering towers. Phoebe guessed it was an Hawaiian tradition, perhaps a type of handmade altar.

Dozens of the
se knee-high or waist-high cairns stood out in eerie relief against the red dirt, blinding blue sky, and myriad shifting blues and greens of the ocean. They were the only visible indication of human existence on the otherwise bald ground.

The place was absolutely silent except for the sound of the wind as it blew past
her ears. She followed the map toward the beach and came to a small house painted in a faded green that seemed typical of Hawaii. The little cottage was raised a couple of feet off the ground, built of a lightweight wood in a board and batten style, and topped with a rusting tin roof.

She parked and walked around toward the ocean side of the house and the front door. A man was sitting on the steps that led up to a porch
shaded by a deeply overhanging roof. Phoebe wondered if she was seeing the origin of the word
lanai
.

She could hardly
make out the man from where she stood in the full sun, because he sat in the dense shade, but she saw beautiful white teeth when he smiled at her. “Ms. McFarland, I presume?”

Phoebe laughed. “Professor?”

“You’ve come to the right place.” He slapped the wooden step next to where he sat and said, “Please, have a seat.”

Phoebe sat
down beside him and looked out at the unobstructed view of ocean. She could hear the waves hitting rocks and see the spray being tossed into the air. There was a small area of sandy beach, but the coastline was mostly dangerous looking jagged rock.

“How much time do we have?” he asked.

“Our tickets have us leaving tomorrow morning at nine, but if you want to adjust the schedule, Arabella can probably arrange things to suit you.”

“
No doubt,” he laughed. Obviously he knew her. “Tomorrow’s fine. You must be tired from your trip. You can get a good night’s sleep and we’ll start our adventure in the morning.”

They fell silent for a few moments.
“What an amazing place,” Phoebe said as she looked out at the shimmering blue, green, and turquoise ocean.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m very lucky. During the academic year I live on
O’ahu, near the main campus of the University, but I come out here as often as I can.”

Phoebe
glanced at him. He seemed to be about her age or maybe a couple of years older. He had a tan and weathered face. His silver hair was tousled by the breeze. He was barefoot, wearing baggy khaki shorts, a faded t-shirt, and large, dark tortoiseshell sunglasses.

“I haven’t been to France in over a year
,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it. Have you been before?”

“Only once, and very briefly.”

“And now
Le Seigneur
wants us to find and retrieve for him?”

“Yes.”

“It must seem quite strange that they would partner you with me.”

“No stranger than anything else that’s happened lately.”

His white teeth flashed again in the shade. He had a gorgeous smile.

“
I got only the briefest description of you,” Phoebe said. “It was a short sentence saying that you taught French Literature. Do you mind telling me about yourself?”

“It’s actually much safer for us both if you don’t know any more about me than strictly necessary.”

“Oh,” Phoebe said. That was unexpected. It took her a few moments to figure out how to proceed after the rebuff, “I’d like to see the island while I’m here. Do you mind showing me around?”

“
Not at all, happy to. The most comprehensive version of the tour takes about thirty minutes. It’s a very small island.”

Phoebe laughed.
“Then how about right now?”

He stood. Now Phoebe could see that he was really muscular.
Obviously he was being sent as her bodyguard. For a moment that made her feel safe. Then she realized she must be about to attempt something that would provoke the
need
for a bodyguard. That was worrisome.

Phoebe went to the rental Jeep and got in on the passenger side.
The Professor followed her and stopped when he got close to her door. He was smiling broadly.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Phoebe said. “I’ve been travelling all day, and my nerves are jangling. Do you mind driving?”

“Not at all,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to try it, but I must warn you that this is probably not the wisest time or place for that sort of experimentation.”

“What?”

“
Le Seigneur
,” he laughed, slapping his meaty thighs, “such a comedian.” He tilted his face up toward the sky and said, “Apparently they were excessively discreet and failed to mention that I’m blind.”

“Blind?”

“As a bat.”

“
Legally
blind or ….
?”

“I had an accident
and then an infection when I was eight years old. Both of my eyes have been removed.”

“Oh,” said Phoebe. That was
really
blind.

“Don’t worry, I have other skills, but I’m afraid I’m
not much help as a chauffeur.”

“
Ahhh,” Phoebe said.

“If you’
ll let me have your seat, I’ll direct you around the island.”

Phoebe got out and went around to the d
river’s side. He got in without difficulty and fastened his seatbelt. She was in shock, but trying to normalize the situation with her new partner, so she said blurted out stupidly, “So you’re blind like Stevie Wonder?”

She managed to stop speaking out loud, but continued in her head,
or Ray Charles, or Andrea Bocelli, or Jose Feliciano
….

“
Not really. I’m a terrible singer.”

Phoebe
didn’t start the car. She sat staring straight in front of her trying to adjust to the news that her bodyguard was blind. What kind of bodyguard was blind? Then she turned toward him. He was facing her with a worried expression. She couldn’t formulate anything to say.

“I may be blind,
” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t see
anything
.”

Okay, here comes the weird part
, Phoebe thought. She’d been bracing for it ever since she’d heard she had a partner.

“I have unusually well developed
inner
vision, spiritual vision. Everyone has it, but most people never notice it because normal vision is so overpowering it drowns out the more subtle visual sense.”

“You’re a seer, a
voyant
?” She used the French term because it was one of the few she’d learned recently.

“No,” he shook his head slowly, “I can see
…
through
things. Sort of.”

“Like Superman?”

“It’s
a little like x-ray vision. But without the x-rays.”

Good
, Phoebe thought,
I won’t have to wear a radiation badge when I sit next to you
. Then it hit her. “Can you see my underwear?” she blurted.

“No,” he said,
rubbing his face in frustration. “And I can’t fly or shoot energy beams out of my eyes.”

“Thank God,” Phoebe said.
“About the underwear, I mean.”