Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 (23 page)

Rosalia hadn’t changed the site of breakfast, but
she had switched the breakfast dishes from delicate china to brightly hued pottery.

“Hey, that’s great.” Roger’s face creased in a delighted smile. He had shaved, nicking his left ear. A spot of blood stained his yellow polo shirt. “Best news I’ve had in a hell of a long time.” He splashed maple syrup liberally over his waffle. “Come on and have some breakfast, Mrs. Collins. Maybe the Coast Guard will get here before we finish.” He twisted to look out across the waterlogged gardens at the white-cap-laced sound.

I looked, too, but at a sky laden with knobby clumps of purplish-black clouds. To the south, lightning flickered behind the bulges of cloud that stretched from horizon to horizon, looking as if they’d been gouged out of slate.

I took a huge gulp of the coffee. God, it was hot.

Trevor spooned sugar into his mug. “Momentary?” he repeated. Oddly, he was the least altered in appearance from the previous days. His curly blond hair was neatly brushed, his face smoothly shaven, his pale pink sports shirt crisp and fresh. But his voice was tight and sharp.

“You mean he didn’t really talk to the Coast Guard, don’t you?” Burton demanded shrilly. “So why get our hopes up? Nobody’s coming. I know nobody’s—”

Valerie twisted suddenly and slapped Burton hard. “Shut up, little man.” Shocked, we fell silent as she continued with withering contempt, “See if you can’t at least pretend you’re a man. Don’t you know, if the ship’s going down, we might ass well enjoy a last
good breakfast,” She reached for a blueberry muffin. “At least the food’s damned good.”

Burton pressed a shaking hand against the red welt her ring had made. Tears glistened in his eyes.

I lifted my voice. “The point is, we do have a chance.”

Valerie lifted an elegantly penciled eyebrow. “Come this way again sometime when you’ve got more good news.” She poked through the roll basket, picked out two miniature cheese-topped sweet rolls.

“My pleasure,” I responded over my shoulder with a flicker of a smile. I like spirit.

I walked swiftly toward the pool. I could have waited until Chase finished his workout, but he would want to know immediately.

I stopped at the shallow end of the pool. The sweet, smooth sound of “My Isle of Golden Dreams” contrasted sharply with the intermittent but rapidly increasing growls of thunder.

Chase knifed through the water, his arms slicing like pistons, his head turning and drawing air in as his legs thrummed the water in a four-four beat.

As he neared, oblivious to my presence, ready to make his flip turn, I yelled, “Chase. Chase!”

He pulled up, stood, his chest heaving, water glistening against his skin, his face ruddy with exertion.

“Chase”—I couldn’t keep the joy out of my voice—“brief contact with the Coast Guard. Lyle doesn’t know how much they heard, but it was something. Our first break.”

“Good,” he said simply. He locked both hands and slammed the water. A plume of water geysered up and splashed over me.

“God, I knew it.” This was Chase at his most confident, his voice deep and full of excitement. “They’ll come. They’re smart bastards, Henrie O. They’re probably scanning the area for our signals right now. They’ll find us.” He looked up at the sky, his eyes intent. “Helicopters. I’ll bet they’re here within a half hour.”

“Chase, Chase, it was just a contact. Nothing that definite.” But his sudden confidence made me smile.

He was revitalized, his dark eyes flashing, a triumphant smile lighting his handsome face. He gripped the pool edge, pulled himself up, and stood beside me, lithe and strong. “
Okay
.” He looked down at me, an odd mixture of pleasure and pain in his eyes. “I’m always lucky when you’re around, Henrie O.”

I caught the intent in his eyes just in time and took a backward step to escape his exuberant embrace. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Miranda standing in the French doors of their quarters.

“Well,” I said lightly, “if they’re going to be here in half an hour, you’d better get dressed, Chase. I think I’ll have some breakfast.”

“Yeah.” He grabbed a towel from the back of a deck chair. “Great idea.” He shivered, hesitated, then said briskly, “But I’m going to get warm first.”

Lightning splintered the sky. Thunder boomed.

It was closer now.

Not here yet.

But close.

Chase started up the path to the hot tub.

I almost called out to him. A hot tub wouldn’t be
my choice with an electrical storm coming. But I’ve never succumbed to maternal instincts with men.

I wondered if we’d have time to finish breakfast before the rains began. The saccharine Hawaiian music was now sullenly counterpointed by an almost constant murmur of thunder.

I pulled out a chair to join Roger’s table.

Chase hurried up the wooden steps of the hot tub and jumped into the frothing water.

He didn’t scream.

It was more of a yelp, a sudden stricture of the vocal cords. His body arched, an unmistakable, violent, shivering contortion. With that single strangled sound he slid smoothly beneath the churning, gurgling water.

“
D
on’t!” I cried. “Don’t go near it. Don’t!” My voice was terrible, a rasping, desperate cry.

It stopped them. Miranda, arms outstretched, halted only a few feet from the redwood tub.

“My Isle of Golden Dreams” continued to play.

Chase’s body broke the surface and bobbed facedown in the foamy water. A dead man’s float that wasn’t a summertime joke.

“Don’t touch anything,” I shouted. “Miranda, for God’s sake, don’t!” I whirled to Enrique. “Quick. The power source. Get it off. Quick. Quick!”

“Chase.” Miranda’s cry was a whimper, lost in a closer, harsher crack of thunder. Slowly she crumpled.

Enrique half-turned toward the bathhouse, hesitated, then swung around and bolted off the patio,
splashing through puddles to disappear around the side of the house.

The generator, of course. That’s where he was headed. God, yes. There was likely a fuse panel in the bathhouse, but Enrique wasn’t going to take any chances.

Smart.

Valerie shoved back her chair. “My God, what’s going on here? What’s happened to Miranda? Is she dead, too?” She clutched her napkin, her eyes bulging as she looked frantically around, as if expecting death in some unknown, unknowable guise to wrap his arms about her next.

“She’s fainted,” I snapped. I whirled. “Roger, circle around the tub. Stay the hell away from it. Take Miranda into the house. Don’t let her come back out here. Trevor, help him.”

Trevor Dunnaway’s face looked like old linen left out to mildew. Numbly, he nodded and pushed back his chair.

I didn’t bother to ask Burton to help. He hunched at the table, a half-eaten muffin crushed in one hand, staring in horror at the hot tub.

“Dad,” Roger said thickly. He was on his feet, his face slack with shock, his eyes glazed with horror. “Got to get him out of—Mouth-to-mouth. Got to—”

“If you touch that water, you’ll be dead, too.” Roger’s hands trembled in mine, like an old man with palsy. “Roger, listen to me. It’s too late. Only a cardiac defibrillator could get his heart started again. We don’t have one. There’s nothing we can do. Nothing.” Of course, Chase’s death could have resulted from instant asphyxia because of damage to the brain stem
rather than heart failure. It depended on how the current ran, leg to arm or foot to head. But there was no way to bring him back from brain-stem damage either.

Don Ho’s voice broke off in mid—lyric. The lights around the hot tub and on the patio flickered and then were gone.

The silence was almost more grotesque.

I stood between Roger and the tub until Enrique strode back to the patio, his dark face masklike.

“Is all the current off, Enrique? Every bit of it?” I had to be sure.

“The generator is turned off. There is no current on the island.” His dark eyes flickered toward the hot tub.

I took a deep breath. I felt old and tired. More than that, I was stung by grief and anger. Chase had trusted me, and I had failed him.

But if I could not save Chase, I would avenge him.

The French door was flung open. “Hey, the lights—” Lyle stopped short, looked across the patio. “What the hell’s going on?”

Valerie reached out to grip the back of her chair, and I knew she did it to keep from falling. “Our little vacation from hell has just provided its first death.” Her voice was thin and ragged.

I looked at her sharply. Did she … could she think this was an accident? But there wasn’t time now to deal with Valerie.

I gestured to Lyle. “You can help. We have to get Chase out of the tub. He’s been electrocuted. Valerie,
Miranda’s stirring. Go see to her. Get her in the house.”

Lightning exploded. The jagged silver-white spear was brilliant against the pitch-dark clouds. The boom of thunder followed immediately.

The storm was almost upon us.

Miranda began to sob, heavy, choking sobs. Valerie, her voice gentle, said, “Come with me, honey. We have to go inside. There’s nothing we can do for him. Come with me.”

At the hot tub the men—Lyle, Roger, and Enrique—worked to get Chase out of the water. The limp body slipped from their hands once. Roger gave a guttural moan. Trevor gently pushed him aside. “Let me.”

It took Lyle standing in the tub finally to push the body up where Trevor and Enrique could pull it over the side. Roger reached up and vainly tried to cushion his father’s fall to the ground.

There would be some bruising after death from this rough handling, but other than the scrape on his left arm from the awkward hoisting over the tub’s wooden edge, Chase’s body was unmarked.

Lyle sloshed down the ladder.

The smell of chlorine eddied around us. I would always remember that odor and the muttering rumble of incessant thunder and the unending flicker of lightning.

Chase’s face, slack in death, appeared utterly at peace. We looked down at him, the Chase we knew in form but with that fierce spirit forever quenched.

Roger fell to his knees beside his father, gripped
one flaccid hand, and began to cry, great tears that rolled silently down his cheeks.

“All right,” I said quietly. Tears are sometimes a luxury that cannot be afforded. “Lyle, let’s use the chaise longue over there”—I pointed across the pool—“as a stretcher, and take Chase—”

“Wait a minute.” Lyle yanked on his khaki shorts, soggy with tub water. His wet T-shirt sagged against his chest. “How the hell do you know so much, lady?” His eyes were hard.

Burton jumped to his feet, pointed at me. “She said Mr. Prescott was electrocuted. How did she know that?”

I was impatient. “Because I can think—and because I was awake on Thursday night when the power went off. I should have paid attention to my own instinct. I was out on the grounds when the lights came back on, fifteen to twenty minutes later. I heard someone coming from the direction of the generator. But when I called out, no one answered. Why not? Anyone abroad on an innocent errand should have responded.”

No one interrupted. Lyle leaned forward, his hostile buccaneer’s face intent. Roger had picked up a fallen towel and was gently drying his father’s hair, smoothing it. Trevor stared stolidly at the hot tub, determinedly keeping his eyes away from Chase’s body. Enrique rocked back on his heels, wary and suspicious. Burton hung back on the patio, his face white with fear.

“I told Chase what had happened. I urged him to be careful in view of the poisoned candy he’d received. But when someone shot at him yesterday, I
suppose we both were more concerned with a direct attack. I thought as long as he was with someone else, he would be safe. I should have kept on thinking about those lights going out—and why someone might have wanted the power turned off.”

“Okay.” Lyle’s agreement was grudging, but he no longer sounded accusatory. “I get you.” He turned toward the tub. “But how the hell did it happen?”

“I suggest”—I raised my voice over a clap of thunder—“that we find out.” The wind was rising, raising goose bumps on Lyle’s skin, tugging strands of my hair free, fluttering the napkins on the breakfast tables. “Burton.”

The secretary started.

Maybe my voice was a little sharp, but I was in a hurry. The rain would be upon us soon. “Get a notebook. Quick. Then get back down here and take notes of every single thing that we do.”

Burton hesitated.

“Pronto.” My voice was whip-sharp.

He darted a glance at Roger, then turned and scurried off the patio.

I didn’t waste time.

“Enrique, how is this tub emptied?” I stepped toward it.

“There is a drain, there, near the bottom.” He squatted on his heels and pointed.

A high, clear voice announced, “I wouldn’t touch that thing for all the cocaine in Bolivia.” Valerie crossed the lawn toward the pool. Her face was the color of old putty. She gave the tub a wide berth. She cradled a pale pink comforter in her arms. “Miranda wanted me to bring this out—for Chase.”

Roger pushed up from the ground and took the comforter. He laid it gently over his father.