Dead on the Island (5 page)

She turned and focused a pair of very large
brown eyes on me. "Oh," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you
come in. Can I help you?"

"Looks as if you're the one who needs help,"
I said.

"Oh no." She gave an embarrassed laugh and
glanced at the papers on the desk. "It's just that we
do
have a collator, but Dr. Samuel always forgets to set the machine
correctly. Then he just brings his papers down here for me to
collate."

She was dressed casually in jeans and a blue
shirt, but she certainly had nice eyes.

"You do this for everyone in the
department?" I said.

"Not everyone. Mostly just Dr. Samuels." She
looked at me questioningly. "Are you looking for Dr. Martin?"

I asked who Dr. Martin was.

"He's the department head. But he's in class
right now, but he'll be back at ten-fifty."

I stepped a little farther into the office
and saw that there was a door connecting this one with another,
larger one, presumably Dr. Martin's.

"No," I said. "I'm not looking for Dr.
Martin. Actually, I'd like to talk to you, if you're Julie
Gregg."

"I'm Julie," she said. "What did you want to
talk to me about?"

"It's about Sharon Matthews," I said.

"Sharon? What's the matter with Sharon?"

"Probably nothing. Did you see her here at
school yesterday?"

She thought about it. "Well, no. But we
don't have any classes together on MWF. Is she sick?"

"She seems to have left home unexpectedly,"
I said. "Her mother's worried."

"Her mother," Julie said.

"Anything wrong with her mother?"

"No, nothing," Julie said, looking back at
the papers on her desk as if the job of collating and stapling them
had suddenly grown incredibly fascinating.

So much for keeping Evelyn's past a deep,
dark secret
, I thought.

"Sharon told you, huh?" I said.

Julie forced herself to look back at me.
"Told me what?"

"Look, Julie, let's not beat around the
bush. That might work on an essay quiz in history class, but this
is a real live person we're talking about here. Sharon told you
about her mother. Did she tell you anything else?"

"Are you from the police?" she said
suddenly.

"No," I said. I got out my billfold and
showed her my license.

"I don't have to talk to you, then, do
I?"

Kids these days are getting too smart. Must
be all that TV they watch.

"Not unless you want me to help Sharon," I
said.

"Maybe Sharon doesn't want your help. Maybe
you just ought to leave her alone." She reached out and started
taking papers off the stacks, one paper off each stack. There was
purple printing on each sheet.

"But you don't know, do you?" I said. "Maybe
she needs my help."

"I don't think so. I don't think she'd want
anyone sent by her mother. Not now. I think she just needs to sort
things out. She'll be back in school in a day or so."

She'd managed to convince herself. Her hands
picked up speed. The papers slipped easily off one another, and she
guided them into a neat stack, tapping the bottoms on the desktop
and stapling them together.

"OK," I said. "Maybe I'll talk to you again,
later on. If she doesn't come back."

"She'll be back."

Since she had never asked me to sit down, I
didn't have to get up. I just walked back out through the office
door.

"Maybe," I said over my shoulder as I
started back down the hall.

~ * ~

It was well up in the morning now. The
clouds were white and the sun was breaking through so often that
the weatherman would have to classify the day as partly sunny. The
temperature was rising, too, along with the humidity. It was going
to be a typical day on the Island.

I got in the Subaru and turned on the radio,
tuning in to one of the oldies stations from Houston. It didn't
matter which one. Out of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of hits in
the '50s and '60s, their playlists seem to include only about forty
records. You could hear everything the Supremes ever did, but you'd
listen forever before anyone ever played "Smoky Places."

This time I got lucky. Roy Orbison. "Running
Scared." It almost restored my faith in radio.

I didn't start the car, just sat there in
the parking lot listening to the song and wondering how long it
would be before someone came along to tell me that I was parked
illegally. I didn't have a parking sticker, but I hadn't looked for
a spot marked "Visitors."

I thought about Sharon Matthews and her
mother. I thought a little bit about Julie Gregg. Every case is
different, but I couldn't seem to get a handle on this one. Julie
appeared to think that Sharon might have taken off because of what
she found out about her mother. I'd had that thought at first
myself, and it could still be right. I needed to find out more
about what kind of person Sharon was, whether she was accustomed to
doing impulsive things like striking out on her own.

I didn't think Julie would be much help.
She'd clammed up when she decided that I was too close to Sharon's
mother. I wondered what, exactly, Sharon had told Julie, and why.
Well, I could always talk to her again. I started the car and drove
down to The Strand.

The Strand takes in roughly the area from
Postoffice Street to Strand, bounded by 20th and 25th Streets.
There are any number of artsy little shops there, selling
everything from clothes to antiques to trinkets, most of them
expensive. The tourists seem to like the restored buildings, and
there were a few of them wandering around even on a Tuesday in
February. The locals tend to avoid the place, as they do the beach,
except in December when the Dickens on the Strand festival is held.
Some of them even dress in Victorian costume then and parade around
the streets. Some of them come to the Mardi Gras celebration in
March, too, taking part in the parades and general good times along
with the hundreds of thousands of tourists.

During Mardi Gras, there's no possible
chance of finding a parking spot, and I've been told that hotel
rooms in the area go for nine hundred dollars or so, but today I
parked with no trouble at all pretty near the shop I was looking
for.

I had to walk up the steps to the sidewalk,
which was nearly as high as my shoulder. I could look back and see
the Elissa, a square-rigged sailing ship, anchored at Pier 22.

There were really two shops with practically
adjoining doors not ten feet from the steps. One of them appeared
to deal mostly in soaps, but the other, the one that interested me,
had a window display intended to appeal to someone with a little
money who was looking for something "different."

There were kaleidoscopes, jars with clever
sayings on them ("For Belly-Button Lint"), hand-made dolls, and
even Christmas decorations. I opened the door and went inside,
where there was more of the same, and even a watercolor portrait of
Dolly Parton, fully life-size. There were tables with dolls on
them, small rocking chairs with teddy bears sitting in them, and
shelves loaded with mirrors and ceramic boxes and cloisonné
thimbles. To the right there was a glass candy counter with a cash
register sitting on top of it. The place smelled of potpourri.

But there was no one in the shop but me.

I threaded my way around the tables and
chairs to another room located to the back of the shop. There were
more shelves, covered with coffee cups that had handles shaped like
alligators. There were lamps made from sea urchins.

But there was no one there, either.

I made my way back to the cash register. The
shop couldn't run itself. Maybe Terry Shelton, if he was working
that day, had gone out for coffee. Maybe he would be back in a
minute.

I waited.

No one came. I looked out the front window.
There was no tourist traffic on the sidewalk. I waited some more.
Still no one.

After nearly fifteen minutes, I decided to
go next door. The place was filled with soap of every description,
or at least every odor. As soon as I opened the door, I was almost
overpowered.

The soap covered the shelves and the
counters. It was in baskets and boxes. It was wrapped and
unwrapped. I had a sudden urge to go home and take a shower.

There was someone behind the counter, and I
wouldn't have minded if she went home and shared the shower with
me. She was about twenty-six or -seven, tall, with an aristocratic
face and nose. I'm a sucker for an aristocratic nose. She had on a
pink warm-up suit that matched the wrapping of most of the
soap.

I walked over to the counter. "Business
seems pretty slow," I said. I'm never at a loss for a
conversational gambit.

She didn't seem to mind my lack of snappy
patter. She was probably bored by the inactivity.

"It'll probably pick up in the afternoon,"
she said. "It usually does.” She had an alto voice that did strange
things to the base of my spine. I fantasized briefly about Humphrey
Bogart and Dorothy Malone in the bookstore scene in
The Big
Sleep
.

"Seen many people going in next door?" I
said.

"Not many. I saw you, though."

"I couldn't find anyone to help me. There's
no one at the cash register."

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on
the counter. "You wanted to buy that portrait of Dolly Parton,
right?"

"Not really. Now if it were painted on black
velvet, I might be interested."

She laughed. It was deep and throaty, not
aristocratic at all. "To match the one you have of Elvis?"

"No, of John Wayne."

She looked at me, really looked at me, for
the first time. I found myself wishing that she wore glasses, so
that she could take them off like Dorothy Malone had done.

"I'd have guessed that you were more of the
Clint Eastwood type," she said. "You do kind of squint, you
know."

"Comes from too much time in the sun."

"You're no beach bum, though."

"Not exactly. I'm more of a generalized kind
of a bum."

"And you really aren't interested in Dolly
Parton?"

"Well . . ."

"Her picture, I mean."

"To tell the truth, no."

"I don't suppose that I could sell you a bar
of soap, either."

"I don't object to smelling good," I said.
"But I wouldn't want you to think I'm a sissy."

"I don't think you'd have to worry about
that." She smiled. "So. What did you want next door?"

"I wanted to talk to a kid named Terry
Shelton. But like I said, there's no one there."

She thought about that. "That's strange. I
mean, we aren't exactly in a rush hour here, but no one would go
off and leave the shop wide open. Not even Terry."

"You know him?"

"I know him a little. From being around
here."

"What's he like?"

She stood up, taking her elbows off the
counter. Then she walked around to stand beside me. "He's, well,
flakey. A little weird. But nice. Are you sure nobody's in there?"
She peered out the door as if she might be able to see inside the
other shop.

"I wouldn't bet my life that he wasn't, but
I stood in there for nearly fifteen minutes and never saw
anyone."

She walked to the door. I followed her.
There were no tourists on our side of the street, though we could
see people walking up on Mechanic Street at the crossing a block
away.

"Should we do something?" she said.

I'd been wondering the same thing, but I
wasn't sure what we could do.

"Maybe we should go over there and look,"
she said. "He might've had a heart attack or something."

"How old is he?"

"Old?"

"I've never met him," I said, "but I was
under the impression that he was a little young to be a heart
attack risk."

"Oh. I guess you're right. He's younger than
I am, I'm sure."

I refrained from asking how old that might
be.

"Let's go over there and check," she
said.

"OK," I said. I didn't have anything better
to do, though I didn't think we'd find anything I hadn't already
seen.

We went out the door of the soap shop and
into the door of the shop where there was no one at home.

"See?" I said. "Not a soul around."

She glanced over the shop. "There's another
room."

"I've been in there. Nobody there,
either."

I walked over to the cash register. In
keeping with the shop, it was not one of the new electronic models,
but an old cast-iron one. You had to know how to make change
yourself to operate one of those babies.

"What did you mean about Terry being weird?"
I said.

"Well, I don't know exactly. He's always
talking about those heavy metal groups. You know. Metallica.
Whitesnake."

"And that's weird?"

"Not really, I guess, but for someone his
age it sort of is. I mean, most guys grow out of that stuff by the
time they get out of high school, but not Terry. He goes to all the
concerts, buys the T-shirts and wears them to work, plays their
music all the time." She looked around the shop. "I knew something
was wrong. I don't hear the music. He's not supposed to play it
loud; the owner gets upset. But it's always on so you can hear
it."

"I don't even hear a radio," I said.

She pointed to a grille set in the wall over
a shelf in the back of the shop. It was only then that I noticed
that the shelf disguised a door set in the wall.

"There's a radio in the storeroom," she
said.

"I'll check it out," I said. "You wait here
in case a shopper comes in." I wasn't sure that I'd find anything,
but I thought it might be better to look alone.

It was just as well that I did. I opened the
door, swinging the shelf out with it. There was no light on in the
storeroom, but I could see that the walls were lined with rough
shelving that was covered with cardboard boxes of various sizes. I
could also see, in the light spilling in from the room where I
stood, a pair of white leather Reebok shoes in the floor. The shoes
were on feet, which were attached to legs. I opened the door
farther. There was someone lying on the floor of the storeroom. He
was lying face down, so I couldn't see what he looked like. On the
back of his T-shirt were the words "IF IT'S TOO LOUD YOU'RE TOO
OLD" in red letters outlined in gold.