Merciless games, p.10
Merciless Games, page 10
The shore seemed the same as the day before. The sea was calmer, but that could change any minute.
“Nothing,” said Katy, finally, shaking her head. “Even with the fog, we’d see if anyone was down there.”
“We need to get down ASAP,” I said, realizing with a sinking feeling that if we did find Helen, she might very well be no longer alive.
We hurried to the main resort building. It was quiet when we stepped inside, like everyone was still sleeping.
Katy turned right at the entrance to walk toward the kitchen when I stopped her.
“Let’s check her room first,” I whispered.
We tiptoed up to the third floor and walked toward Helen’s bedroom. There was no one in the corridor and there were no signs of anyone being up and about yet.
When we got to Helen’s room, I rapped on the door lightly.
Nothing.
After waiting a few seconds, I knocked again.
Still nothing.
“It’s not locked,” whispered Katy, pushing down on the door handle.
Crossing our fingers, we peeked inside the novelist’s room.
The room looked exactly how we left it the evening before, but something was off. My tired brain whirred trying to figure out what it was, but it was just waking up.
“She never came back,” I whispered.
“This means she’s still down at the shore,” said Katy. “Do you think it’s time to call the police?”
I was about to reply when I realized what was bothering me.
“Where’s the manuscript?” I said, pushing the door open and walking in. “Where’s that photo you found?”
“Oh, my gosh,” said Katy, closing the door behind her and joining me by the bedside table. “Someone took it.”
“I thought Mary locked the door,” I said.
We searched the room.
We checked inside the wardrobe, under the bed, and we even lifted the mattress to see if someone had stuck it underneath there.
We opened Helen’s suitcase, feeling slightly guilty about going through her things. But, other than her clothes, a pair of black high heels, a makeup kit from an expensive brand, a curling iron, a velvet pouch containing a stunning red-stoned necklace with matching earrings, and a few multivitamin bottles, there was nothing out of the ordinary in her luggage.
Next to her suitcase was Helen’s brown leather purse, with her wallet still inside. Her identification and five hundred dollars of cash were tucked within.
“A woman who packs her fancy jewelry, heels, and makeup didn’t come here to jump off a cliff,” said Katy, slamming the suitcase shut. “I swear someone did something to her.”
“I doubt she fell,” I said, getting up. “Let’s go find Oliver and Mary. They must be up by now.”
It was time to call David and Tetyana. I had a feeling this missing person mystery was going to turn into something bigger soon.
We closed Helen’s door and tiptoed along the corridor. The other rooms were still closed and there were no sounds of showers working or taps running.
I glanced at my wristwatch. It was fifty-seven minutes past five. They were all still sound asleep.
After a quick check inside the dining room, Katy and I went down to the first floor. The smell of coffee brewing and butter frying came our way as we reached the main foyer.
“Good, they’re up,” I said, as we hurried toward the kitchen.
Oliver and Mary looked up as we burst in.
Mary was standing by the stove, a spatula in her hand, frying an egg. Oliver was on a stool, pulling his boots on.
“Any sign of Helen?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not,” said Oliver, slipping into a yellow rain jacket. “I’m heading down the walkway to check up on her.”
“We’re coming with you,” I said.
Oliver nodded. I thought I saw a sense of relief pass across his face.
Mary shook her head at her frying pan.
“Never has anyone gone missing in my forty years of lighthouse keeping. I don’t think the Coast Guard will even believe us when we tell them. What a pickle.”
She picked up a second egg and cracked it over her pan. She turned to us with a rueful smile. “When I get nervous, I cook. That’s what I do best. I know it sounds strange, but it’s soothing.”
It was a sentiment I knew well. Learning to bake kept me sane through my hellish childhood. I smiled at Mary. I liked her.
But can I trust her?
Oliver picked up a small backpack that had been lying at his feet and stuffed a first-aid kit and a neck brace into it.
“You stay right here, Mary,” he said. “These ladies and I will figure this all out soon enough. Just make sure the guests are fed so they don’t make a ruckus.”
Mary turned back to her pan with a sigh. “Be careful out there. The steps will be slippery, especially with the dew.”
I turned to Mary.
“Did you lock Helen’s door last night?”
“I did,” she replied, “but I went back to unlock it.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Why did you do that?”
“I couldn’t sleep thinking she had probably wandered off. I didn’t want to lock her out, just in case she came back. All her things were in that room. Poor girl. She was in such a state.”
“Did you go into her room when you unlocked it?”
“I peeked in to see if she wasn’t already inside by some miracle, but I didn’t go in. Why do you ask?”
“The manuscript was missing this morning.”
“The what?”
“Helen Jenkins’s work. The book she was writing. Remember, it was sitting on her bedside table last night?”
“The stack of papers, you mean? Are you sure you didn’t see it?”
“Someone took her unpublished book, but left behind her jewelry pouch and wallet with five hundred dollars. Strange, isn’t it? I wish I took the manuscript to our room now.”
Mary gave me a confused look. “Why would anyone take her book?”
“Beats me.” I shrugged. “Neither of you took it, by any chance, did you?”
“Good heavens, no,” said Mary, giving me a wide-eyed look. “We wouldn’t even know what to do with it. You’re welcome to check our room if you don’t believe me.”
I shook my head.
If Mary was the thief, which I doubted, she wouldn’t leave the manuscript in her bedroom for anyone to find. The person who took it had wanted it for a very specific reason, and they were most probably hiding it somewhere safe.
I turned to Oliver, who was picking up a folded stretcher from the floor.
“It’s time to call the authorities,” I said.
He nodded.
“I just did. Sent a brief message to the Coast Guard station this morning. Said we’re going on a search mission first thing. Ms. Jenkins could be anywhere. I didn’t want to cry wolf and get on the Coast Guard’s blacklist. They have a penalty for false alarms, and it isn’t cheap.”
“But you said you had no phone,” said Katy.
“We don’t.”
“Internet?”
“I have an old modem in my office. Just good for email. That’s how I get instructions from the owner.”
“It’s how we talk to our kids too,” said Mary, who had turned back to her eggs. “As long as Mike comes in with our weekly rations, we don’t need to be connected to all the hubbub out there. We came here to escape it all.”
Katy and I exchanged a look.
“How did you contact the Coast Guard?” I asked, wondering why they just couldn’t answer a simple question.
Chapter Twenty-four
“VHF radio,” said Oliver, seeing our faces. “It’s how I talk with the Coast Guard.”
He thrust the stretcher out toward us.
“Can you ladies help me?”
Katy took the stretcher, and I hoisted the bag that carried the plastic water bottles and the blanket for Helen.
Oliver shouldered the first-aid kit.
With a wave to his wife, Oliver walked out of the kitchen with us.
The walkway was slippery from the morning dew, but that wasn’t going to stop us. At least we had full daylight and a rope railing to hold on to now.
I took the lead, walking gingerly down the wet steps.
“Did you hear anything last night?” Katy asked Oliver when we were at the halfway point. “Anyone walking around, opening and closing doors?”
“I’m afraid not,” replied Oliver. “Our room is downstairs, next to the kitchen. They renovated this building to high standards, so everything is soundproof now. If someone was prowling in the middle of the night, we’d never have heard them.”
I stopped at a flat part of the walkway to catch my breath and turned to Oliver.
“Oliver, what do you know about the guests?”
“Not much. The owner sent me an email with a list of names, their phone numbers and their designated room numbers. That was about it.”
“But you seem to know a bit about each of them,” I said.
He paused for a moment, his face somber, and then as if deciding to talk, he nodded.
“To be honest, I found all this a little strange. I was getting instructions from a boss I’d never met. I was supposed to invite a bunch of writers I’d never heard of. Then, this request to confiscate everyone’s phones made me a little uneasy. So, I, er, did some digging.”
“Digging where?” asked Katy. “You don’t have the Internet.”
“Used Mike’s phone when he came over one day. Mary insists on him having a meal with us once a week. I told him what was going on, and the two of us used his phone to do some research, while Mary made lunch.”
“Good thinking,” I said.
Oliver shook his head.
“I’m not proud of it. It wasn’t very professional of me to snoop on the guests.”
“Given the circumstances,” I said, “that was a wise move.”
“Find anything?” asked Katy.
Oliver went silent for a minute. He stood against the cliff face, staring at the ocean.
Why is he hesitating? Is he debating whether to tell us the truth?
“Quite a bit,” he said, finally. “They’re all well known in the book circles, so it was easy to find them.”
He fell silent again.
We waited.
It was no use rushing him. He was opening up. I only hoped he was as sincere as he looked and sounded. I had started to put some faith in the cook and the butler.
On the distant horizon, the sun was peeking out, and the fog was lifting. It was a relief not to hear the incessant crashing of the high waves on the pier below us. I hoped the weather kept improving. I didn’t cherish the thought of trying to find Helen or her body in the pouring rain next to an angry sea.
“It was just that,” said Oliver, speaking again, “a few of the writers seem to have sprung up overnight.”
“Sprung up?” asked Katy. “What do you mean?”
“Take that screenwriter, Elliot Ward, for instance. You’d think someone who wrote for a film would have a lot more information about him, going back years.”
He paused as if to recall what he had read.
“Same goes for Ms. Carter and Mrs. Knight. Their websites were simple, bare, and I could only find background going back two to three years. It’s like they all popped up and became famous out of nowhere.”
“They’re writers,” said Katy, “do they even have websites?”
He nodded.
“Mike and I checked other writers, and they had more comprehensive sites with their books, pictures of their dogs, what wine they like, and all the usual stuff.”
I remembered how Sophia, Elliot, and Camilla had evaded my questions at dinner the night before. They got cagey when I broached the topic of Hollywood.
“That sounds fishy,” said Katy, frowning.
Oliver nodded.
“I don’t know too much about famous people, but I read a lot of books. And I know it takes more than ten years to become an overnight success.”
“Maybe they worked somewhere else before they started writing?” I said. “In another industry?”
“We’d still have found info on their earlier careers, wouldn’t we?” said Oliver.
“What about Ratcliffe?” I asked.
“He had the longest bio of them all. He’s been in business for ages and he loves to talk about himself. It wasn’t hard to find info on him.”
“Jason?” said Katy.
“Lots of stuff about him too. He grew up in the online gaming world. But I must admit, some of his videos were a little… Let’s just say, if Mary knew he made them, she’d have walked off the island and told me to call her back when he left.”
“Risqué videos?” said Katy.
“Horrible. Had nightmares for days after watching one. Lots of gore and bad things happening. Mostly to young women….” Oliver trailed off, making a face, like he was trying to get rid of a foul taste. “Things that didn’t look legal, if you ask me.”
I raised an eyebrow. Jason came across as an intelligent and successful artist, but even he had a dark past.
“And Javier, well, he’s the most famous out of the lot. He’s a reclusive fellow, but you can find articles about his work in almost every major literary site.”
“Helen?” asked Katy.
Oliver nodded.
“Prolific, well-known novelist. She seemed legitimate. She’d won awards and such and all her books are talked about. Nothing struck me as off with her.”
That was all the information Oliver seemed to have found on the guests.
We resumed our hike down.
When we reached the bottom of the esplanade, we walked abreast and scoured the beach, advancing the shoreline, foot by foot.
Elliot had been right about one thing.
The ocean was more than a hundred feet away. Muddy lines on the rock faces told us where the tide came up, but it was too far for the waves to have washed Helen away.
We walked around the island, but spotted no place where a human being could hide or stay covered near the shore. The rock formations were too small for even a child to stay hidden behind them.
After circling the island a second time, we stopped to take a break near the jetty, just under the lighthouse. I put down my bag and looked up at the tower looming above, wondering about the stories it could tell us.
Katy let out a sigh.
“I hate being cut off like this,” she said, looking out to the ocean. “Right now, I’d do anything to call my hubby and talk to my daughter.”
“Don’t you worry, Ms. McCafferty,” said Oliver, “Mike will be here in a few hours. It will be a relief to see the boat.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, remembering what Katy and I had spotted from the boat when we came in. “There was a white cross on the other end of the island. Next to the clump of trees behind the building. Is there anything else out there?”
“The last keeper’s grave. He wanted his remains to stay on the island. We planted those trees almost thirty years ago. The wind’s nasty on that end and the soil breaks off every time a storm comes. Plus, we thought they would give some shade to his grave.”
“Can someone hide back there? Behind the trees or a mausoleum, maybe?” I asked.
Oliver shook his head.
“No mausoleum, just the trees. The north wind is rough out back. You can only stay behind those trees for so long before you get whipped raw. I’m sure she isn’t there.”
Oliver rubbed his exhaustion-lined forehead. I imagined he’d little sleep, just like us.
He turned a puzzled face my way.
“What if all this is a hoax?”
“How so?” I said.
“Maybe Ms. Carter thought she saw Ms. Jenkins, but it was a….”
“A what?” asked Katy. “A practical joke?”
Oliver shrugged. “An illusion?”
“With a dead body?” said Katy.
“A dead body we haven’t found,” replied Oliver grimly.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Are you saying Camilla didn’t see a body?” I asked.
“She would have to be a pretty talented actor to pull that sort of drama off,” said Katy.
“When you’re up on the cliff, the shore is quite a way down,” said Oliver. “Ms. Carter said she saw someone facedown on the beach with a black coat on. She assumed it was Ms. Jenkins, but it could have been anyone.”
“So, someone could have been pretending to be Helen,” I said, looking at Oliver with renewed respect. He was trying to sort this out, or he was misleading us.
I had to take the chance.
“Good point,” I said to encourage him.
“It was that,” he replied, “or Ms. Jenkins was alive and well, but laying down on the beach, face covered. Anyone who saw her from the top would automatically think she fell.”
“Why would she do that?” asked Katy. “Why would anyone do that?”
“If that was the case, it was because she wanted someone to think she was dead,” I said, playing along. “She saw someone who scared her at the dining hall. Someone she said was practically a murderer. This was her twisted way of not making herself a target.”
“But why make yourself disappear?” asked Katy.
“To make everyone think her body got washed away overnight?” I ventured. “If she planned all that, it was a dangerous move that could have actually killed her if she slipped down last night.”
Oliver gave a dismal shrug and sighed.
“This is wishful thinking on my part. I don’t want to think that anyone died suspiciously on my island. This is such a peaceful place. It’s too horrifying to even think about murder.”
Katy turned to me.
“That means Helen could be alive and well, and is up there, somewhere,” she said, pointing up to the plateau.
How scared do you have to be to play an elaborate game like this?
Oliver stared out at the open ocean, a resigned look on his face.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore. Maybe she’s in with our new owner. Maybe they’re all in this together, playing a nasty game on us.”
