the beach in plain sight.”
“What about… when we need to relieve ourselves?” Billie asked. “Do you want us to do it right here on the beach?”
Connie joined the party. “Not me. Huh-uh.”
“We’ll work something out,” Andrew said. “For the time being, we can keep on using the same area as before. But not without an escort. Let me know, and I’ll go with you.”
“Oh, charming,” Connie said.
“I changed your diapers, babe. But don’t worry, I won’t peek.”
“This really sucks,” Connie said.
Andrew suddenly looked steamed. “You’ve got two sisters whose lives have been blown all to hell in a matter of less than twenty-four hours. There’s an asshole out there who’ll probably try and kill more of us the first time he gets a chance. What we do not need at this particular juncture is any kind of adolescent shit from you. We know you’re deeply inconvenienced by all this, but…”
“Go to hell!” she blurted. Bursting into tears, she whirled around and ran toward the water.
Thelma, by the way, was already on her knees, sobbing into her hands. This had happened at about the time Andrew made the remark about the two sisters whose lives had been “blown all to hell.”
Billie scowled at Andrew and shook her head. “That was really uncalled for, do you know that?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but went hustling after Connie.
I was the only member of the group still standing, in Andrew’s presence. He seemed to be glaring at me from behind his sunglasses.
“I didn’t say anything,” I told him.
“Don’t be a smartass,” Andrew said. And stalked off himself.
I was left on my own, so I got my bag and came up to my tower. (Violating the new rules about straying off, I suppose, but nobody called me on it.) There was a lot of journal to catch up with. Instead of going to the place I’d found yesterday, I picked a spot in the rocks where I had a view of our beach.
When I arrived, Kimberly was still busy on the other side of the inlet, picking up rocks and gently arranging them on top of her husband. After she finished with that, she took care of making the cross. (I’ve been keeping an eye on her while I write. The others are down there, too, but they haven’t been doing anything worth mentioning.) For a while now, Kimberly has been sitting on the beach. She is still wearing Keith’s bright, Hawaiian shirt. Her legs are out in front of her, her knees drawn up, her arms around her shins. She seems to be gazing out at the water. A breeze is stirring her hair, and fluttering the shirt a little behind her back.
She looks so beautiful and alone.
I wish there was some way to make things better for her.
The important thing, now, is to make sure that the killer doesn’t get any more of us.
Pow-Wow
We ate supper early. Billie did the cooking again. It was a mixture of noodles and beef from some foil packets that Andrew and Keith had gathered out on the inlet, yesterday. We also had some canned peaches, and bread from a loaf that had gotten through the explosion with its cellophane bag intact. We drank stream water, pouring it into our plastic cups from a pot that we passed around.
None of us had eaten anything all day, as far as I knew.
I, for one, was pretty hungry.
We sat in the sand around the fire, eating, passing the water pot around, and not saying much. Everyone seemed pretty upset.
Afterwards, Billie asked me to help her with the dishes, and I agreed. Glad to get away from the group, for one thing.
The “dishes’ were a mix of things: a couple of metal pots rescued from the bottom of the inlet by Keith, plus plastic plates, cups, knives, forks and spoons that we’d brought ashore for our picnic.
We didn’t want to mess up our beach with food scraps, so we carried everything out to the north point— leaving the beach behind and stepping carefully from rock to rock until we reached the very end (forty or fifty feet below the place where I like to work on my journal). We went around the tip, just a bit.
There was nothing to see on the other side. Just more water, beach and jungle.
Billie sat on a rock and dangled her legs in the water. She washed her dishes by bending forward and dipping them into the water between her knees. When I knelt near her and tried to scoop up some water in a pot, she shook her head. “Just put it down. I’ll take care of washing these things. I just wanted you along for the company.”
“I’ll help.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There isn’t enough here to worry about.” She had brought a rag with her. Also, back on the beach, she’d scooped up some sand in one of the pots. While I watched, she rubbed the dishes with sand, wiped them with the rag, and leaned forward to rinse them with a dip in the water.
She didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
I sure wasn’t.
I liked being out there with her. For starters, Billie is great to look at. She had some major cleavage showing, and her breasts wobbled and shook because of the vigorous way she was washing the dishes. And then there was the way she kept bending forward to rinse things…
It wasn’t just her looks, though. Also, she’s a cool lady. She has always been very nice to me (too nice, if you ask Connie), she treats everyone decently, she has a sense of humor, she isn’t prudish (she’s almost immodest), she doesn’t fly off the handle every two seconds, and she seems to have loads of common sense.
Unfortunately, she didn’t pass on many of these traits to her daughter. Connie has some of Billie’s looks, but apparently didn’t inherit much of her temperament.
Anyway, it was very nice to be out there on the point with her. I tried not to stare at her all the time.
Each time she finished cleaning an item, she twisted sideways and reached up and handed it to me. I made a neat pile on a slightly higher rock.
We were almost done when she gave me a plastic fork, looked me in the eyes and said, “I have a feeling it might be Wesley.”
Her words took me completely by surprise, but I knew right away what she meant.
“It’s occurred to me, too,” I said. “He blew the boat on purpose?”
“Some kind of timing device, so he’d have a few minutes to swim clear before she went up.”
“I’ve seen that sort of thing done in some movies,” I said.
“And so, I’m sure, has Wesley.”
“Do you think he’d have the guts?”
“Never underestimate the guts of a weasel,” she told me. She patted the rock beside her, so I sat down. “I haven’t mentioned this to Andrew, yet. Not to anyone else, either. Wanted to see what you thought of the idea. You’re not an actual member of the family, for one thing. And you’re a good, sensible guy.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Look at the whole deal as an elaborate set-up,” she said. “Whose idea was it to give Andrew and I this boat trip for our anniversary? Wesley’s. Who made all the arrangements? Wesley. Who came down in advance to look things over? Wesley. Who picked this island for our little picnic yesterday? Who stayed on board while the rest of us came ashore? Who got blown up—supposedly?”
“He might’ve actually chosen this island as the place to stage the accident,” I suggested. “Maybe he toured around last week till be found a nice, uninhabited one.”
“Exactly,” she said. “He would’ve needed not only a deserted island, but one that’s out of the way—where we’re not likely to get found immediately.”
“Or at all.”
“And while we’re on that subject,” Billie said, “he could’ve left a trail of false information to make sure nobody misses us—or knows where to come looking.”
