The Island of Dangerous Dreams (11 page)

“You were the one who was watching me!” I said. “I could feel it.”

“You’re worth watching,” he said, and continued without a pause. “Should I tell you about the judge?”

“You know him?”

“Unfortunately.” He cocked his head and studied me. “You’re not his daughter or niece or anything like that, are you?”

When I shook my head he said, “A month ago I went into Palm Beach to look around, and I was dressed like this. I guess I should have worn a tie,
because I got picked up for vagrancy.” He shook his head sadly. “Last year I had an old sorehead math teacher who didn’t have a sense of humor and brought charges against us just because we hot-wired his car and left it on the lawn in front of the courthouse. So when Judge Arlington-Hughes was told I had a record, he let me sit in jail all night, then read me the riot act. I’d probably be there yet, except I kept demanding that I be allowed to call my father, who’s a big-shot lawyer in Miami.”

He paused and said, “Look, Andy, I didn’t say I had class. Okay?”

“I’d probably do the same thing,” I said. “Anyhow, you hadn’t committed any crimes. You shouldn’t have gone to jail.”

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled. “When I saw you I knew we’d think the same way about things.” He paused. “I’m not a bad guy, Andy. If you talked to my mom, she’d tell you.”

“I didn’t ask for a reference,” I said. “Go on with your story.”

“Okay. That private eye-muscleman who works for the judge knew my dad and said I was who I claimed I was, so they just told me to get out of town. The PI, who ought to get picked up for carrying a concealed weapon, escorted me to the city limits and kicked me across the invisible line.”

“That’s terrible!” I said.

“Yeah, so when I saw the two of them get off that boat—”

“The private eye? He wasn’t on the boat.”

“Sure he was. Tall, dark-haired, looks like a football player. His name’s Frank Bartley.”

I stood up, trying to sort all this out. “There’s someone who looks like that who works for the judge, but he’s a secretary, and his name is Kurt Cameron.”

Pete got up, too, standing so close to me that I could feel the warmth from his arm next to mine. “Secretary? That’s what he calls himself? Don’t believe it. Ha! Don’t believe anything he tells you.”

9

“But my Aunt Madelyn knows him,” I said.

“I bet she didn’t know him in Miami,” Pete said. “Bartley used to work there, and he did a couple of investigative jobs for my father. I recognized him.”

“Why would he use another name?”

“Private investigators use aliases all the time. Fake jobs, fake business cards, you name it—fake. Maybe he used the name of Kurt Whatever when he worked jobs for the judge so people wouldn’t find out he’s a PI. A secretary stays in the background, right? Nobody wonders about a secretary.”

I thought about it a minute. Pete was probably right. “Do you want to come to the house and see if Ellison can find the wire you need to fix your boat?” I asked him.

“Not with the judge and the muscleman there,” he said.

Of course. He didn’t know. So I filled him in on
everything that had happened. Well, not exactly everything, because I didn’t tell him that I had taken the artifact.

When I finished he let out a long, low whistle. “No wonder you want to get off this island,” he said. “I’m with you. How good are you at the dog paddle?”

I must have looked awfully discouraged, because Pete took my hand and said, “Come on. I’ll cheer you up. I’ll show you my boat.”

He led me along a natural path among the trees, and I could see that the woods were crisscrossed with these grassy open strips and spots. In some places we had to push away branches or vines, but the going wasn’t difficult. The island was narrower than I thought, so it didn’t take us long to reach the small cove where Pete’s boat was anchored.

It was a beautiful little boat, about twenty-five feet long, with a tiny cabin. Pete waded to one side of the boat. The water was about hip deep where he stood. “If you don’t mind getting wet, you can come aboard. But keep your shoes on. There are some spiny things just under the water here that you shouldn’t step on with bare feet.”

I didn’t mind getting wet. I was curious. I followed him up the aluminum ladder to the deck.

“The wheel’s out here,” Pete said, “but take a look below. That’s where I live.”

I leaned in to see a tiny cabin that was laid out with a padded bench on one side, a table over a compact ice chest, stove, and sink on the other side. “Tucked up in the bow is my bed,” Pete said, “and beyond the door at the side is the head.
Would you like something to eat?” He jumped down into the cabin, opened the nearest cupboard, and pulled out some packages of Twinkies. I climbed down the short flight of steps and sat on the padded bench.

“Do you cook?” I asked.

“Sure. Anything that comes in a can. I’m self-sufficient.”

He sat next to me. We split a package of Twinkies and drank some warm cola. “Ice melted,” Pete explained.

“You are in a bad way,” I told him. “Do you want to see if Ellison has got some tools so you can work on your rudder?”

“I’ve got tools,” he said. “It’s the wire that I need.”

I stood up, nearly bumping my head on the low ceiling. “Why don’t I look around for a wire? There must be a storeroom or shed or something where they’d keep things like that at the judge’s house. Just show me what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

Pete frowned. “That’s out of the question. Too risky.” He leaned across me, resting one arm on the doorframe, effectively blocking my way. “I don’t like the idea of your going back there for any reason.”

“Neither do I, but my aunt’s there,” I said. “Besides, if I don’t show up, they’ll probably come looking for me and find your boat.”

“I shouldn’t let you go to the house alone. I’ll come with you.”

“A stranger shows up on the island and two men
die. You know what the people at the house will think, especially because they don’t like the idea that one of their group might be a murderer. They’ll all be suspicious of you.”

“Are you?”

I looked right into his eyes, but I couldn’t read his thoughts. “I haven’t any reason to be,” I answered.

He straightened to let me pass, then followed me up on the deck. “Okay. Go back. You know where I am, and I’ll be checking on you.”

“Deal,” I said.

“Do you know how to get back?”

“I ought to find the house if I keep heading west.”

“It’s a little longer, but a lot easier, if you just cut across to the beach on the other side,” he said.

But I wanted the quickest route, so I headed through the woods. At first the going was easy, but thick patches of trees blocked the sky and the sun, and I had to guess a couple of times on my direction. The woods were quiet—too quiet. The silence was like a fog that crept after me, that would crawl over and smother me. Frantically, I deserted my plan to head west and made for the north beach, pushing through underbrush, scrabbling and tripping, until I broke clear, falling on my knees on the sand.

The sunlit water was so peaceful and beautiful that I felt like a fool, like Benita in her hysterics. I had let my imagination capture me, the way I had when I was four and was sure there was a monster under my bed. I sat on the sand for a few minutes,
catching my breath, then followed the beach north until the judge’s plantation house lay ahead, a foreboding blob of shadow in what should have been sun.

As I came toward the house I saw Ellison wiping his hands on a rag and heading toward the door to the kitchen. I ran up the front steps to the lower veranda and through the front door. Someone had left on a table lamp in the living room, and it cast a puddle of light. So Ellison had finally fixed the generator. Good. I felt much better knowing we’d have electric light tonight. I flipped off the lamp switch and went upstairs to my room.

Everything in my room looked the same as it had, so there was no reason for the creepy feeling that someone besides me had been in it. I checked the small closet, and my clothes were hanging where I had left them. Well, almost where I had left them. The bottom half of my pajamas was hanging on the hook over the top half, and I always hang up my pajamas with the top on top.

It was a shock to think that someone had searched my room. Then shock gave way to an anger so intense that the room took on a dull, reddish haze. How dare they!

I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to calm down. What could they have found? Nothing. I hadn’t brought much with me. There wasn’t much of anything in the room. The candlestick and candles and matches were still on the chest of drawers, next to my camera. My camera had been moved, but I had expected that because Kurt had used it.

I reached to pick up the camera and discovered that the back had been opened. Had Kurt used up the rest of the roll of film? No. I groaned in frustration and slammed one fist on top of the chest. The film was still in place. The back had been opened to expose the film. The whole roll was ruined.

Had Kurt done this? It didn’t make sense. Why would he take the shots, then deliberately spoil them? Was his offer just his way of discovering the location of my camera and covering himself so that he could do this to the film?

Any of them—Aldo, Benita, Ellison, or even Aunt Madelyn—could have opened the back of my camera.

I closed it with a snap and walked out to the veranda, leaned on the railing, watched the brilliant sea, and fought the desire to curl up in ball and cry.

“It’s unbelievable!” Benita’s voice rose to a high, excited pitch. Her voice was coming from a room far down on the veranda, a room with the shutters wide open. If she was in that room, then Aunt Madelyn was probably with her. Maybe they could tell me something about my ruined film. Angrily, I strode down the veranda and stopped at the open doors.

Madelyn was on her hands and knees, searching under the single, double bed. Benita was pawing through the top drawer in a chest of drawers, and Aldo’s back was toward me as he rummaged in the closet.

“He won’t come back. I know it, I know it!” Benita was saying.

I stepped into the room and shouted at them, “What are you doing?”

They looked at me and froze, eyes wide like wild rabbits caught in headlights on the roadside at night.

“Whose room is this?” I asked. “Where’s Kurt?”

Madelyn was the first to recover. She got to her feet and said, “Something has happened, Andrea.”

“What?”

Benita stepped forward, like a kid wanting to tell a secret first. “We found Kurt’s shoes and shirt on the dock. He told us earlier he was going to try to swim to the nearest inhabited island. So that’s what he’s done! We’re sure of it!”

“He can’t do that!”

“But he did.”

I just stared at them for a moment as I tried to absorb the information. Then I remembered what they’d been doing. “I don’t understand why you’re searching his room,” I said.

Madelyn said, “Be realistic, Andrea. You saw the artifact. It’s priceless. We can’t leave the island without it, so we must hunt until we find it.”

“You searched my room, too, didn’t you?”

Benita had the grace to look slightly embarrassed, but Aldo said, “We are all under suspicion.”

“Then why don’t we search
your
room?” I demanded.

“We did,” Madelyn said.

“What did you find?”

“Nothing.”

I remembered what Pete had told me about Kurt’s real identity. Had they discovered that yet?
I glanced at the top of the chest and saw a set of car keys, a pocket comb, and a wrinkled handkerchief. “Where’s his wallet?” I asked.

“We didn’t find a wallet,” Benita said. She looked indignant. “You don’t understand. We’re looking for the artifact only. We aren’t prying into people’s wallets, for goodness sakes!”

“Just into cameras.”

“What are you talking about?” Madelyn asked.

“My film,” I grumbled. “Someone opened the back of my camera and exposed the whole roll. All the pictures Kurt and I took have been ruined.”

“Kurt didn’t know how to use your camera. He said so,” Madelyn explained. “Maybe while he was trying to figure out how it worked he accidentally opened the back plate.”

An accident again? How often would that excuse be used? I kept my thoughts to myself and didn’t answer.

Aldo swept the room with his gaze. “We’re through in here,” he said. “I suppose the next step will be a thorough search of the downstairs rooms.”

“Come with us, Andrea,” Madelyn said. “We need all the help we can get.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Hasn’t it occurred to any of you that if someone finds the artifact, he—or she—isn’t likely to let on? We could hunt all day, while the finder had it in his pocket.”

It didn’t rattle them. “We’ve made a pact,” Benita said. “We’re going to share the proceeds from the artifact.”

“But that topaz isn’t yours!” I said. “It wasn’t the judge’s property either.”

Aldo looked puzzled. “I don’t understand. Whose property is it?”

“It belongs to the country of Peru,” I said. “It was smuggled out, and that’s illegal.”

He relaxed and even smiled.

“Oh, good heavens,” Benita grumbled. “Is that all you’re talking about.” She walked into the hall, and the others followed.