Nobody seemed amused. Not even Billie, who sort of cringed when I said it.
“We’ll have no more of that,” Andrew told me.
“Yes, sir.”
“All I’m trying to get at,” Thelma went on, “is that in my opinion I think Wesley didn’t get killed because he did something stupid on the boat and blew everything up. I think he got murdered, the same as Keith.”
Staring toward the fire, her voice very calm, Kimberly said, “Has it occurred to anyone that maybe Wesley isn’t dead, at all?”
Billie’s eyes latched on mine.
“Suppose he arranged for the boat to explode—after he got off it?”
“What do you mean?” Thelma asked.
Kimberly grimaced at her. “I’m sorry. It has to be said, though. I think there’s a chance that Wesley’s alive, and that he might be the one who murdered Keith.”
Then she spelled it out. The whole scenario, just as if she’d been listening to Billie and I out on the point. She used nearly all the same reasoning, but presented her argument in a more logical, concise way than we’d done. About the only thing she left out was my theory that Wesley visited the island in advance and hid a cache of supplies for his own use.
Through the whole thing, Thelma sat there looking stunned, betrayed, aghast.
When Kimberly finished, Thelma said to her, “You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“If she is,” Billie said, “so am I.”
“Me, too,” I said.
Thelma turned her gaze to Connie, looking for an ally.
“Don’t ask me,” Connie said, then went right on and added, “All I know is that I’ve always thought Wesley was a pig…”
“Constance!” Andrew snapped.
She flinched, but went right on. “So it wouldn’t exactly come as any big shock if he pulled something like this. I mean, I don’t wanta hurt your feelings, but I thought you were nuts to get involved with him in the first place, much less marry him.”
Andrew glared at her.
“Well,” Connie said in a whiny voice, “she asked.”
Thelma looked as if she’d been slapped silly. She turned to Andrew. In a sad, pathetic voice, she said, “Dad?”
“You know good and well how I felt about Wesley. But I’m on your side in this.”
“There aren’t sides,” Billie put in.
“Whatever. Thing is, it makes a cute theory—Wesley set us all up and faked his own death. But I’d say it’s too cute. He didn’t have the smarts or ambition or guts to pull off a stunt like that.” Andrew stuffed some tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.
“Maybe we never knew him,” Kimberly said.
“You didn’t,” Thelma blurted. “None of you knew him. He wouldn’t… do something like this. You don’t know how sensitive he could be.”
Andrew took a burning stick from the fire. As he sucked the flame down into his pipe, Billie said, “I think most of what we saw from Wesley—including you, honey—was false. I don’t know that we ever saw an honest emotion from the guy.”
“Slick Wesley,” I said.
“You shut up,” Thelma snapped at me.
After a few puffs on his pipe, Andrew said, “There’s the matter of the rope. It didn’t come from our boat; I would’ve seen it. Which leads me to the conclusion that the rope was on this island before we got here. More than likely in the possession of the fellow who used it on Keith.”
“And that lets Wesley off the hook?” Kimberly asked.
“In my opinion.”
“Suppose he had the rope in his luggage?”
“He didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
Andrew blew out a pale plume of smoke, then said, “I inspected his luggage.”
Thelma’s eyes bulged. “You what?”
“Settle down, honey. It was as much for your protection as ours. Just wanted to see that he hadn’t packed anything worrisome. Drugs, a firearm…”
“Dad!”
“Who else’s stuff did you search?” Connie asked. She looked ready to blow her lid.
“Nobody’s. Just Wesley’s.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“It isn’t any wonder that he felt like everybody was always against him,” Thelma said. “I just thought he was being overly sensitive, but…”
“We’re not against him,” Andrew said.
“Like fun.”
“I’m not, anyway,” he told her. “I’m saying the rope didn’t come from the boat. If it didn’t come from the boat, where could Wesley have gotten his hands on it? He’s innocent. Keith was murdered by a stranger. A stranger who had access to that rope.”
“Wesley might’ve brought in a load of supplies last week,” Billie pointed out.
“That’s right,” Kimberly said, nodding eagerly. “If he set things up to maroon us, he almost had to lay in supplies for himself.”
That was my idea, of course. But I was happy to let them take credit for it. Seemed as if I’d already opened my mouth once too often.
I had to open it again, though. With a look at Thelma, I said, “Whether it’s Wesley or some stranger, there probably is a bunch of supplies hidden somewhere on the island. I mean, the rope came from somewhere, right? Tomorrow, we oughta go and try to find where the stuff is being kept.”
“What we oughta do tomorrow,” Connie said, “is climb into that dinghy and haul our asses out of here before we all get killed. I mean, isn’t that the smart thing to do? Just leave? Whoever this guy is, he won’t be on the dinghy with us. We just trot ourselves over to a different island, where there isn’t some lunatic trying to wipe us out. I mean, you look out there and you can see those islands.”
“They’re farther away than they look,” Andrew pointed out.
“So?”
“We’d run out of gas before we got anywhere close to them. Then we’d be stuck on a dinghy with limited amounts of food and water…”
“But nobody trying to kill us,” Connie pointed out.
“We’re a lot better off here, believe me. We’ve got everything we need to sustain life. We could spend our entire lives here in relative comfort, if it came to that.”
“Swiss Family Collins,” I said. Couldn’t help it.
“God save us from that,” Billie said.
“Wesley’ll murder us all first,” Connie said.
“It’s not my Wesley!” Thelma cried out.
“Well, whoever!”
“Stop it,” Andrew said.
I’ll have to stop pretty soon, myself. Gotta hurry things along; it’s almost too dark to see what I’m writing.
The upshot of the pow-wow was that either Wesley or a stranger killed Keith and might be after more of us or all of us. We won’t try to get away in the dinghy tomorrow, but we might keep it in mind in case things get worse. We’ll probably spend tomorrow exploring the island. We are posting double guards tonight: first Andrew and Thelma; then Kimberly and Billie; and finally me and Connie. Obviously, nobody is supposed to go off alone.
After the pow-wow, we all ran around and gathered a whole bunch of firewood. We also picked up rocks to
