study it.
“She sounds as if she’s paranoid already,” Ashley murmured.
Jake shook his head.
“Perhaps,” Ashley began, “I should—”
“No,” Jake said firmly. “No. She’s back here, and she’s safe. There’s no reason to say anything.”
“We both know—”
“Yes, we both know. But we don’t know what the hell else is going on. Leave it. I’ll call Bobby, they’ll check out the island. Other than that, there just isn’t a hell of a lot we can do.”
“Jake—”
“Ashley, it’s out of our hands. And besides, since we don’t really know anything for certain, what the hell are we going to say?”
She sighed, still unsure that silence was the right course.
* * *
Keith surfaced, lifting his mask, spitting out his mouthpiece. He saw Lee on deck—his binoculars in his hands, looking toward the island.
Hand on the ladder, Keith kicked off his flippers and crawled aboard.
“What?” he asked Lee, shedding the rest of his equipment.
Lee shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure what they’re doing.”
The day before, they had caught sight of Sandy and Brad on their old scow of a boat—and the couple had been watching them through their binoculars.
“What does it look like they’re doing?” Keith asked.
“Stashing, stowing...getting rid of something. In a hurry.”
Keith took the binoculars from Lee and turned slowly, scanning the horizon. Damn! He thought as he sighted a Coast Guard cutter. Beth. She just wasn’t going to let it rest. She’d gotten the authorities involved. The problem was, they weren’t going to find anything.
“Take a look,” he said softly to Lee.
Lee took the binoculars back and followed Keith’s line of vision. “Coast Guard,” he muttered. He looked at Keith. “Anything we need to worry about ourselves?” he asked. “This isn’t the time to be making explanations.”
Keith shook his head.
“Nothing down there?” Lee asked tensely.
“Not yet.”
“What was on the radar?”
“An old tire iron.”
Lee swore. “Well, hell, let’s get ready for guests, then, huh?”
Keith nodded.
He turned, moving down the deck to find the freshwater hose and rinse down his equipment before stowing it. Lee hurried down to the cabin.
As he worked, Keith was startled to see that Brad had gotten in his dinghy and was motoring quickly away from his anchored boat.
He chose the direction away from Keith and his group, disappearing around the island.
He was gone for only a matter of minutes, back long before the Coast Guard cutter approached.
Brad hadn’t even turned on the dinghy’s motor, he thought. He had used the oars, but had moved with incredible haste.
Why?
The answer was obvious. To try to go unnoticed. And to get rid of something.
Or someone?
* * *
On Monday Beth had been hopeful, by Tuesday she had been mad, and on Wednesday she was morose, then angry again, this time with herself.
Keith Henson knew her name, where she came from and where she worked. She realized that she’d had it in her head that he was going to find her, that he was going to say he had to see her again, that he was as mesmerized, fascinated, and in love or lust with her as she was with him.
But obviously he hadn’t made any effort to locate her—she was simply too easy to find.
Every time the phone rang, she answered it eagerly, then was disappointed. Since she had come home, she realized, nothing had changed.
She still thought about two things: Keith Henson and the skull on the island.
She realized that she was becoming obsessive, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Despite the fact that Ashley and Jake had been true to their word—they had taken her seriously and gotten a friend to order the Coast Guard to search the island—nothing had been discovered. She should have been happy—there had been no corpse on the island, no body parts.
But she couldn’t help wondering where the skull she had seen had been hidden, or whether at this point it had been removed entirely.
At home—and even at work—she had spent hours online, looking up everything she could find on the Monocos. There were pictures of them alongside their magnificent yacht. There was even an old photo of them—from perhaps fifteen years ago—when they’d been at her club. That meant some of the older members might have known them.
She’d also searched the name Keith Henson on the internet. She found a dozen men of that name who had websites or were mentioned in articles.
He was not one of them.
She was thinking about both the island and Keith now, as usual, tapping a pencil idly on her desk, when there was a knock on her office door and George Berry, the current commodore of the club, poked his head in.
“Beth?”
“Hi, Commodore.”
“May I come in?”
“Of course, please do.”
He sat in the chair across from her. “I’ve been worrying about the Summer Sizzler.”
“Oh?” She smiled questioningly.
The Summer Sizzler was an annual event, and all new members were seriously encouraged to attend. It was an important date on the club’s social calendar. The food had to be the best. The entertainment was expected to be the same. And it was coming up in less than two weeks. She, along with the entertainment committee, had it well in hand.
“Chef Margolin has been working hard,” Beth assured the commodore, when he didn’t say anything further. “He hasn’t given me his final menu yet, but I’m willing to bet that once again, he’ll completely outdo himself.”
The commodore waved a hand in the air. He was a man in his early sixties, with a head of the most remarkable silver hair she’d ever seen. His wife had the exact shade. They both had twinkling blue eyes, and in Beth’s mind, they were adorable. They’d had no children, and for as long as she could remember, they had put
