“Where did he work?” I said.
“Nat said Robert worked at the big house, he was a cook mostly, but did some other basic repairs around the place. Take a look for yourself,” he said, pointing at the telescope. “I check up on it all the time, just in case I saw something suspicious.”
I looked through the telescope and squinted to see properly through the eyepiece. I gasped as I realized that the house Stuart was looking at was the very one that Effie and I had tried to break into the night before.
“Who’s house is that?” I gasped.
“Old Toothless Pete,” Stuart said. “The guy is a weirdo, but he inherited a pretty penny from his parents. That’s their family manor.”
Could Pete have killed Robert? If he was truly the only one that knew Robert had the treasure, then that would give Pete a motive.
“Do you think Pete could have killed Robert for the treasure?” Miller asked.
“For some rich folk, no amount of wealth is ever enough,” Stuart replied. “I guess it’s possible, but I thought Robert had been living in Australia this whole time… I’ve not had much chance to think about it all yet.”
“That’s Pete’s house?” I repeated. If that was true, then had he been the one that set the lawn on fire outside Honey’s guest house? Was he trying to destroy the crime scene because he was involved in Robert’s murder? He didn’t seem like a killer, but most killers are just regular looking people. Maybe I had it all wrong.
“Hey, what’s that?” Miller asked. He had hold of the telescope and had changed the angle so that it was pointing down towards the crumbled wall between the two islands.
“What’s what?” Stuart asked.
“There’s some strange colored rock underneath the rubble, it looks like… oh boy,” he trialed off.
“Are you planning to clue us in or just keep mumbling to yourself?” I teased.
He beckoned me closer with a hand gesture and I looked through the telescope at the area he was inspecting. In the shallow water where the wall had collapsed it seemed that there was something solid and still, large enough that it had caught Miller’s eye.
“Is this…?” I paused. Stuart was tapping his foot loudly behind us both, clearly frustrated with the stop-start nature of our commentary of events. “Sorry, it just looks like the islands—”
“Are connected?” Stuart said. “Yeah, I know. I found some old journals from a relative that had been involved in building the wall. It was never intended as a barrier to keep us all apart, it was initially to help with the rough waters that used to crash through the channel between Green Holt and Skerry. Over time the islands drifted a little closer together, the waters calmed down and people forgot why the wall was there. The whole feud has been fabricated because word of mouth was the only source of information.”
“They were talking about Churchill over there,” Miller said.
“Oh, I bet they were. I don’t know where that nonsense came from either,” Stuart laughed. “That’s why it’s so ridiculous that Natalie and Robert had to fight so hard to be together. Look down there, Green Holt and Skerry are one huge island, only when you are this high up and there’s low tide can you see it. We aren’t two islands at war, we are one island with a common-sense deficiency.”
“I think we need to get everybody up here to see this,” I said. “It might be the only way to put an end to the fighting.”
“Yeah, I think there was some island movement over the past week that cause the wall to fall down. I see it all from up here, but sometimes people are so afraid of the truth that they actively avoid it. I’ve been asking people to come and see for themselves, but they figured I was just a Green Holt spy,” Stuart tutted.
“Well, that’s crazy talk, but I will do what I can to help you out,” I smiled. “Not right now though, I have to go see a pirate about a bribery.”
I turned to walk away, and Miller jogged a few paces to catch up. “Pirate? You think Pete is the blackmailer?” he asked.
“I think Pete is up to something,” I replied. “Robert worked at that big house and the only person that knew he had found the treasure was Pete. That means Pete would have enough of a motive to kill him in order to steal the gold.”
“I don’t know, how come you ended up with that stone?” Miller asked.
“Hey, I don’t have all the answers yet, but I feel sure that once we catch the person blackmailing Jeff that we will be a whole lot closer to the truth,” I said, marching through the palm trees back toward the beach.
“Did you find him?” the three men on the sand shouted. They were standing now, seemingly taking turns with a pair of binoculars to spy on the opposing island.
“Yeah, your dad says that the islands are connected. Your feuding days are coming to an end fellas!” I yelled.
“Oh, he’s always spouting that theory. I love him, but the guys a wack job,” the tall one laughed.
“Well, he’s right! Go see for yourself,” I shouted as I climbed into the boat. Our parting view of Skerry was of three men scrambling up the dirt track up toward the telescope tower on the hill. Once I shared the news that the islands were connected with the folk on Green Holt then hopefully the fighting would end. Not bad for a morning’s work.
17
“What makes you think I want to be involved in this?” Fitz asked.
“You are my familiar, are you not?” I replied. Fitz regarded me with a look of horror on his face as I had done the unimaginable and asked him to be useful.
“Why don’t you
