I nodded. I’d been nodding fairly regularly since the start of our talk.
“I bet he even came ashore,” I said.
“Here?”
“Yeah. He must’ve brought in a bunch of supplies and hidden them somewhere. For his own use, you know? Whatever he’s got in mind for us, I’ll bet his plan doesn’t include screwing himself out of stuff to eat and drink.”
“And what,” Billie asked, “do you suppose his plan might be?”
“What do you think?” I asked her.
“I asked you first.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “For starters, Wesley wouldn’t do any of this if he really loved Thelma.”
“I agree. And he didn’t. I think he could barely tolerate her.”
“So why did he marry her?”
“She’s very rich. As are we all, thanks to Andrew.”
“Yeah. Okay. Is mere a way that this business of marooning us might make Wesley rich?”
“Sure. If he’s the only survivor.”
We looked at each other, and we both grimaced.
“What would he inherit?” I asked.
“What wouldn’t he?”
“Jeez.”
“So that’s his plan. Kill us all.”
“Maybe,” I said. “He’s gotten off to a great start—killed the toughest male in the group.”
“I don’t know about that.” She smiled. “Andrew’s a pretty tough hombre.”
“He’s probably next on the list.”
She shook her head. “Won’t let that happen.”
“We’ll have to talk to the others about this.”
“That’ll certainly endear us to Thelma. We’d better leave her out of it”
“Talk to them one at a time,” I suggested.
“Yeah.”
“We might be completely wrong, you know. I mean, this is all guesswork—sort of farfetched, too.”
“But it all fits,” Billie said.
“Yeah. The only thing is, sometimes things are the way they seem. Maybe Wesley did get blown up with the boat.”
“And Keith was killed by… ?”
“A restless native?”
A corner of Billie’s mouth turned up. “Maybe Gilligan did it.”
“Or the Howells.”
Billie smiled and shook her head.
I suddenly felt a little guilty for kidding around about Keith’s death. Getting serious, I said, “In a way, it doesn’t matter who did it. What matters is that it happened and the killer’s probably still out there. Whether he’s Wesley or someone else, it’s pretty much the same deal.”
“Except I’d sure like to know who we’re dealing with.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”
“It isn’t quite as scary when I think of Wesley out there trying to knock us off. At least he’s not a complete stranger. If it’s not him, it might be someone ten times more dangerous.”
“Better him than some sort of deranged jungle-man.”
“I’ll say.”
“So, what are we going to do about our theory?” I asked.
“You don’t see any major holes in it?”
“No. I think there’s every reason to believe it is Wesley—except that maybe he was blown to bits yesterday.”
“Or maybe he wasn’t.”
“Nobody found any bits,” I admitted. “Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t blown up…”
“I’ve picked up one lesson from many long years of watching crappy TV mysteries,” Billie said. “Here it is: if the body isn’t found and identified beyond a shadow of a doubt—then the person ain’t dead. It’s almost always a ruse, and the ‘dead’ guy is up to no good.”
“I’ve noticed that, too,” I said. “But that’s TV. TV ripping off Agatha Christie. Or maybe… is there a Holmes story where a ‘dead’ guy is a perpetrator?”
Billie frowned at me. “I wouldn’t know, Rupert. Do you think it is or isn’t Wesley?”
“Might be.”
She slapped the side of my arm, but in a sort of playful way. “Don’t be difficult.”
“Sorry.”
“What I’m getting at… should we tell the others about our suspicions?”
“We’d better.”
“Good. That’s what I think, too.”
“But maybe we’d better bring it up in front of everyone,” I said. “Including Thelma. Otherwise, what’ll happen if he is the killer, and she runs into him?”
“You’re right,” Billie said. “We’d better let everyone in on it.”
With that settled, we gathered the dishes and returned to the beach. I was all set to work on my journal. Before I could get started, though, Andrew called everyone together for a group discussion.
We all sat around the fire.
Everyone seemed solemn except for Connie, who gave me dirty looks from the other side of the fire. Odds are, she’s put out with me for disappearing around the point with her mother. She probably thinks we were making out.
“There are things that need to be said about our situation here,” Andrew began. “And we need to make some decisions about how to proceed. This time yesterday, our only real concern was how long we might have to wait before being picked up by a rescue party. Now, Keith has been murdered. That changes…”
Thelma raised her hand like a schoolgirl.
Andrew gave her a nod.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “About Keith’s murder and… about Wesley.” Her chin trembled. She pressed her lips together. After a couple of seconds, she went on. “Doesn’t anybody find it funny that Keith got killed so soon… It was just yesterday the boat exploded and… you know. Wesley. What I’m trying to say… you all think the boat was an accident. But maybe it wasn’t, though. I’ve been thinking about all this, you know? Maybe somebody blew up the boat on purpose. What I mean is, maybe Wesley was murdered, too. Not just Keith. Maybe they blew up the boat to kill Wesley and strand us here. Maybe the idea is, they want to pick us off one by one. Or maybe they only just want to kill off all the men.”
“If that’s the plan,” Kimberly said, “they’re halfway home.”
I didn’t much like the sound of that, me being part of the remaining half.
“What ‘they’ are we discussing here?” Andrew asked. He seemed a little annoyed. “I’m not aware of any ‘they.’”
“Whoever’s behind all this,” Thelma told him.
“You think we’re the victims of a conspiracy?”
She stuck out her lip. “You’re just so sure Wesley got careless…”
“If he didn’t blow up the boat by accident,” Andrew said, “then why did it explode?”
“I don’t know,” Thelma said. “Anything’s possible. Maybe it got hit by one of those rocket things. Or somebody might’ve swum up to it underwater and attached a bomb to it. You know?”
“Who would do such things?” Andrew asked.
“Drug dealers? Maybe we’ve stumbled onto a nest of drug dealers, and they need to eliminate us. Or maybe there’s a secret military base on the island.”
“Maybe it’s Dr No,” I suggested.
