Photographs would’ve been a really good way to show the authorities how Keith and Andrew were killed. (Andrew is out to sea, but we could still unearth Keith and get some shots. I’m not about to suggest it, though.) Anyway, my mood underwent a major change because of Kimberly calling me back—not to mention the way she looked.
We gathered at the supply pile (preferring to avoid the campfire with its heat), and sat on the sand around it. As usual, Billie took charge of the food. We ate crackers and cheese left over from the picnic. There was sharp, Swiss cheese, and smoked Edam. She sliced the cheeses with Andrew’s Swiss Army knife. She also popped open a bottle of wine that Keith had brought up from the bottom of the inlet. It was a Glen Ellen Cabernet Sauvignon. Though warm, it tasted awfully good. We passed it around, and took sips while we ate our cheese and crackers— and talked.
There was “small talk” at first. About the food and wine and weather. Like everyone wanted to avoid mentioning the nasty stuff. After about ten minutes of that, Kimberly said, “I saw who did it.”
Wham.
Silence.
Everybody stopped chewing and stared at her.
We knew she meant the killer.
She’d been swimming out toward the dinghy with her head down, most of the time, so I think the rest of us assumed she hadn’t gotten a look at him.
We waited for her to say the killer’s name.
But her face told us who she’d seen.
Thelma said, “No.”
“I’m sorry,” Kimberly said. She looked terribly solemn.
“Wesley’s dead!”
“He isn’t. I saw him plain as day.”
“No, you didn’t!”
“I’m sorry, Thelma. It was him. He’s the one I saw. He’s the one who murdered Dad.”
“You’re lying!”
Kimberly shook her head. “I thought long and hard about whether I should tell. I almost decided to pretend I hadn’t seen who did it. Pretending wouldn’t do us any good, though. I know it’s tough, but you’ve got to face it. Wesley’s alive, and he’s killing us.”
“No!” Thelma blurted. “It’s a lie!” She started to blubber. She still held a half-eaten cracker with a slab of half-eaten cheese on top. I expected her to throw it. Instead, she shoved it into her mouth. Then she flopped over and scurried away from us on her hands and knees. When she was clear of the group, she staggered to her feet and trotted away.
Kimberly started to get up.
Billie raised a hand and shook her head slightly. “We’ve gotta make some plans. She’ll be all right.”
Kimberly stayed.
Thelma stopped just short of the water’s edge, then sat down on the sand, her back to us.
With Thelma out of earshot, a change came over Kimberly. She let her anger out. “The dirty bastard. I knew it had to be him. He’s gotta be the one who killed Keith, too.”
“He probably plans to kill us all,” Billie said.
“Guys first,” I added.
“What’re we gonna do?” Connie asked. She seemed more frightened than her mother or Kimberly.
“We can’t just sit around and wait for him to make the next move,” Billie said.
“That’d be me,” I said.
Though Billie nodded in agreement, she said, “It might just be the next person he happens to catch off guard. I realize he started with Keith, then got Andrew, but… he couldn’t possibly have known who’d be going after the dinghy this morning.” She hesitated. “When I think how close we came to letting it go…”
“If I’d kept my big mouth shut,” Connie said.
“It wasn’t that,” I told her. “Andrew wasn’t about to let it go.”
“I could’ve stopped him,” Billie said.
“Nobody’s to blame,” Kimberly said. “Nobody but Wesley.”
“He’s awfully damn sneaky,” I said. “We’ll really have to watch ourselves.”
“We’ll have to do more than that,” Billie said.
Kimberly nodded. “We need a plan of action.”
“I still think we oughta get off the island.” That was Connie, of course.
“No,” Billie said. “Your dad was absolutely right about that: we’ve got food and water here. We can survive indefinitely.”
“Yeah, right. Look what happened to him.”
“Wesley did that,” Kimberly said. “What we’ve gotta do is eliminate Wesley.”
“Or eliminate ourselves,” I suggested.
Billie asked, “What do you mean?”
“He can’t kill us if he can’t find us.”
“You mean we should try to hide?”
“It’s just a thought. The thing is, we’d have to find him before we could do anything to put him out of action. That might be a pretty good trick. But he knows exactly where we are. We’re almost always in plain right, here on the beach. All he has to do is hang back in the jungle and spy on us till he spots an opportunity to strike. But what if he comes looking for us and we aren’t here?”
“He’d find us,” Connie said. Always the optimist.
“Not necessarily.”
Frowning, Kimberly said, “I’m not too crazy about playing hide and seek with the bastard. I want to take him out. Hunt him down and kill him.”
“Why not draw him in and kill him?” Billie suggested.
“How would we do that?” Kimberly asked.
“Pull a disappearing act,” Billie explained, giving me a nod. “Lure him in and ambush him.”
I liked the sound of that.
From the look on Kimberly’s face, so did she. “How would we pull it off?” she asked.
Billie shrugged. “We’ll have to figure something out.”
So we sat there talking about it, tossing schemes back and forth as we passed around the bottle of wine. We were in agreement on the general principle of the thing, but kept running into the same snag; we had to figure that Wesley might already be watching us. How could we possibly pull off a vanishing act (especially one that would allow us to hide nearby and attack him), right in front of his eyes?
Even in the middle of the night, with the fire out, the beach wouldn’t be dark enough to completely hide our activities. The sand was too pale, and too much light came from the moon and stars.
“We need to keep the fire going,” Billie said. “It’ll screw up his night vision.”
“But if we don’t put it out,” Kimberly said, “he’ll be able to see us in the firelight.”
“Maybe we can figure a way to make that work for us,” I suggested. “You know? Make him see what we want him to see. And while he’s watching that, the rest of us might be sneaking to our positions.”
Billie nodded. “Distract him.”
“Right,” I said. “If, say, one of us creates a diversion he can’t take his eyes off of, the rest of us could do just about anything.”
“What sort of diversion do you have in mind?” Connie asked. From the look on her face, she must’ve already suspected what I had in mind.
I shrugged and said, “I don’t know. We could stage a fight, maybe.”
Not what I really had in mind, but I would not be the one to suggest a striptease.
“A fight would take at least two people,” Billie pointed out. That only leaves three to maneuver around and jump him.”
“It’s just the first thing that came into my head,” I explained.
Right.
