Trouble at High Tide Read online

  “But you’ve heard about our scandalous murders, of course? The island is overrun with reporters. They say the killer is a reincarnation of Jack the Ripper.”

  “I did hear that.”

  “Foolish comparison. I wish those newspeople wouldn’t play with the facts. They just like to upset the population.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. “From what I read in your local newspaper, there are some similarities between this murderer’s actions and those of Jack the Ripper.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe so. But don’t you think that if the killer finds himself compared to an infamous murderer that he’ll go out of his way to truly imitate the original by killing even more young women? Give himself plenty of notoriety?”

  “I would say that being a serial killer already imparts notoriety to the perpetrator, Jack the Ripper or not, but I understand your point,” I said. “Unfortunately, you’re dealing with an unbalanced person to begin with, an attention seeker.”

  “Well, imitating Jack the Ripper is certainly a way to attract attention.”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, Agnes, are you on again about Jack the Ripper?” The speaker was a tall blonde in her midthirties, dressed in a gold cocktail dress that clung to her ample curves. She sank down on the divan next to Agnes, her weight causing the older woman to rise like a float on the water.

  “A serial killer on Bermuda is news, Margo. I’m just keeping up with the times. Jessica Fletcher, this is Margo Silvestry, Tom’s”—Agnes hesitated a moment—“significant other.”

  “How do you do?” I said.

  “Fine, thanks, but I need a drink.” She craned her neck and signaled to a uniformed waiter, who hastened over and held out his tray, where four tall glasses stood.

  “Only champagne? Don’t you have anything else?”

  “What would you like?” the waiter asked.

  “A sidecar, but I like it with Alyzé instead of Cointreau, and not so much lemon.”

  The waiter looked perplexed.

  “You know what? Just find Adam and tell him Margo wants a sidecar. He knows how I like it.”

  The waiter left and Margo twisted around, crossing her long legs and tugging the hem of her dress in a vain attempt to keep it from riding up. “Tom told me about you. You’re the mystery writer, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know much about mystery novels, but maybe you can give me one of yours. I didn’t bring anything with me to read.”

  “Actually, the only book of mine that I brought was a gift for Tom. Perhaps he’ll lend it to you.”

  “I’ll have to remember to ask him.”

  All the while she was speaking, Margo’s eyes roamed the room as if searching for someone.

  “She’s not here yet,” Agnes said to her.

  “Who do you mean?” Margo said innocently, suddenly examining her red fingernails.

  “Claudia. Tom’s not interested in rekindling that relationship. I’m not even certain she was invited.”

  “That’s never stopped her before,” Margo said acidly.

  The waiter returned with the same four glasses of champagne on his tray. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Silvestry. Adam said he can’t break away right now, but if you can wait, he’ll bring you your drink in fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh, how irritating. Then never mind.” She extended her hand and wiggled her fingers at the waiter. “Help me up. I’ll get it myself.”

  The waiter placed his tray on the glass table and assisted Margo to her feet.

  “I’ll be back,” she said and flounced off.

  “So that’s Tom’s girlfriend,” I said.

  “Yes. He’s been seeing her for six months. Bit of an age difference, at least twenty years, but she seems intent on becoming wife number five.”

  “Number five? I’d no idea.”

  “My dear, you need a scorecard to keep track of Tom’s love life.”

  “Who is Claudia, then?”

  “Wife number four. She lives in St. George’s. Their divorce was big news on the island two years ago, nearly resulted in assault charges.”

  “Against whom?”

  “Tom, of course, although Claudia is strong. She plays tennis every day. Spends the other half of her day in the gym. She wanted the house and he wouldn’t give it to her. He managed to hang on to the house and the boat through two other divorces and wasn’t about to cave on that subject. Told the judge it was all he had left. You can see that he won that battle. It was quite the scandal for a while.”

  “And yet she comes to his parties?”

  “This is a small island, dear,” Agnes said. “We can’t afford to hold grudges. It would close off too many social opportunities. Margo doesn’t understand that yet, but if she marries Tom, she’ll learn.”

  I looked across the room to where Tom Betterton frowned down at his adopted daughter, Madeline, who was telling him something and gesturing with her hands. He was a tall man in his late fifties or early sixties, a bit on the heavy side, face deeply tanned, his light brown hair teased and combed to make it appear thicker than it was. He wasn’t my idea of an attractive man, yet he’d been married four times.

  Agnes’s gaze followed mine. “You’re wondering how he does it, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I don’t really know him that well,” I said, feeling that I had to defend Tom if for no other reason than that I was his guest. “He’s certainly well spoken. The audiences we appeared before on our book panels enjoyed him. He’s very personable.”

  “And presumably rich.”

  “I don’t know anything about his finances.”

  “Money is endlessly fascinating,” Agnes said, sighing. “An inheritance from the first wife who died, I heard. Still, I can’t imagine how he affords them all. He must keep a divorce lawyer on retainer.”

  I watched Tom and Madeline walk through the French doors to the broad terrace overlooking the ocean. They stopped to talk to a striking woman with short black hair, wearing a sleeveless yellow sheath. Even from my relatively distant vantage point I could see the muscle definition in her arms.

  Margo, who had been on her way back to us, drink in hand, caught sight of the trio and immediately changed direction. She stepped onto the terrace, looped her free arm through Tom’s, and leaned against him. I gathered from her body language that the newcomer was Tom’s ex-wife, Claudia.

  “It’s a small island,” Agnes commented. “Who was it that said, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’?”

  “Machiavelli, I believe.”

  “How apropos,” she said with a little smile.

  Chapter Three

  The party was still going when I decided to retire for the evening. Agnes had convinced me to try a Dark and Stormy and regrettably the alcoholic concoction had simultaneously given me a headache and caused me to grow tired. I enjoy an occasional glass of wine or sherry, but I’m not accustomed to heavier drinks. Fortunately, Adam was available to escort me to my cottage, taking my elbow to guide me along the unfamiliar and winding gravel path down toward the beach.

  Before leaving, I had bid Agnes good night and found her nephew Charles to let him know that she was alone.

  “She’s used to that,” he said, scowling at me. “I don’t have time for her right now.” His rudeness took me aback, which he must have realized because he mumbled an apology before striding off in her direction. I now knew why Agnes felt it necessary to remind him of his manners.

  Perhaps it was the freely flowing alcohol, but there seemed to be a change in the tenor of the party from convivial to combative. I saw Madeline and her brother, Stephen, arguing with Alicia. The younger woman tried to walk away and Madeline grabbed her elbow and forcefully turned her around. A moment later the woman I’d assumed was Claudia emerged from the kitchen carrying a box with an irritated Adam in pursuit, calling after her, trying to retrieve it. And when I made my excuses to Tom, thanking him once more for his generous offer of the cottage and for hosting the pa
rty, an inebriated Daniel Jamison, Betterton’s litigious neighbor, came over to poke Tom in the chest and complain loudly that, unlike the judge and his cronies in New Jersey, he, Jamison, was not one to take a bribe.

  Tom disengaged from his neighbor and waved to Adam, who quickly took my arm and ushered me across the terrace, eager to discharge his duty and get back to the man who employed him.

  “You’ll be all right, Mrs. Fletcher?” he asked as he deposited me on the porch of the tidy guest house that was to be my home for the week.

  “Absolutely,” I said. The briny aroma of the air and the echo of the waves softly rolling onto the sand were a balm to my aching head and a welcome distraction from the confrontational scenes I’d just left.

  “Thank you for everything,” I said.

  “My pleasure, Mrs. Fletcher,” Adam said. “I’d better get back. See you tomorrow.”

  I sank onto the canvas cushions of the porch swing and used my toe to propel myself into a gentle movement that seemed to keep time with the waves. I closed my eyes and let the sounds of the night wash over me. I heard Adam hustle uphill, the soles of his shoes crunching the pale gray gravel. Raucous noises from the party—laughter, loud singing, and some angry words—reached my ears, but they faded from my consciousness as the soothing sounds of the sea and the sway of the swing lulled me to sleep under a canopy of a million stars.

  I awoke with a start some time later, disoriented to find myself still sitting on the swing. What did I just hear?

  Stiff and sore, I made my way inside, locking the screen door behind me, but leaving the outer door open to let in the night air. I undressed, put on my robe, and brushed my teeth at the sink that served both the tiny service kitchen and the bathroom. The cottage was compact but held all the necessary amenities for a week’s stay. A long counter, on which the sink sat like a glass salad bowl, also held a toaster, coffeepot, and miniature microwave oven. A half-size refrigerator was tucked under the counter next to open shelves of dishes, glasses, silverware, and pots and pans. The kitchen area was spare but surprisingly well equipped, I thought, as I pulled a paper towel off the roll to dry my hands.

  My drowsiness had fled thanks to my unintentional nap. I stood at the screen door, took a deep breath, looked out, and listened carefully. Except for the soft beat of the waves on the sand, the night was silent. Whatever I’d heard—the cry of an animal or bird perhaps—was gone. My watch said it was two in the morning. I glanced longingly at the bed with its cool white sheets and comforter, but I was wide-awake and knew that if I lay down I would simply spend the next hours tossing and turning. Instead, I changed into a pair of gauze cropped slacks and a light sweater and walked down to the beach.

  The sand was warm from the day’s hot sun and my feet sank in with every step until I reached the verge where it became cool and firm. I slipped off my sandals and walked barefoot, dancing away from the higher waves but allowing the foam to wash over my toes. The moon had risen and its cold white light bounced off the waves, adding extra illumination to the night. I shaded my eyes from the moon and peered down the beach. To my right was Tom’s second cottage, temporary home to his British publisher, Godfrey Reynolds, and his wife, Daisy. I couldn’t see it from my quarters, but I noticed that it, too, had a porch swing and screen door. The Reynoldses’ cottage was appropriately dark, its occupants probably sleeping off the caviar and champagne and other refreshments served at Tom’s party. If you were smart, I told myself, you’d be sleeping, too, instead of wandering a deserted beach in the wee hours of the morning.

  The contours of the beach curved to the left. A stone breakwater reached into the ocean; large rocks like offspring of the gray barrier littered the sand and blocked my view. Ahead of me rose two huge boulders, remnants of what once had been natural arches that were destroyed by a hurricane in the last century. I debated turning around. There was still time to get a good night’s rest. No one would wake me in the morning. I can sleep as late as I like, I told myself, but of course I wouldn’t. I’ve always been a lark, an early riser, up before the sun, preferably on the water with my rod and reel if a friend had offered a day’s fishing. I weighed the benefits of returning to the cottage, but my feet kept moving forward.

  A cloud slipped over the moon, dimming its brightness. I stepped between the large boulders and spotted a set of stairs leading down from a building on the cliff above. I couldn’t see the whole house from where I stood, but it appeared to be another mansion overlooking the sea with a tower on one end. The view from that tower must be spectacular, I thought, turning toward the ocean and trying to envision how far its occupants might be able to see.

  As I peered out, my eyes were drawn to what appeared to be a vague form near the water’s edge, the muted light obscuring the details. Had some sea creature washed up on shore? Or was it simply flotsam thrown overboard by a careless boater that had floated in with the tide? I walked toward it and as I neared the form, the cloud parted and moonbeams shone down, breaking into a million flecks of light on the water. I stopped. A woman lay slumped on her side. The waves climbed up the beach; the white foam hugged her bare back, then receded into the sea with a sigh. Blood that had poured from her neck, black in the night’s shadows, had stained the pink sand, but was fading as the ocean’s relentless surge scrubbed it away.

  I walked around the body to get a better look. Wet tendrils of blond hair covered her brow, rested on her cheek, and caught in the gaping wound below her jaw. The moon shone on a face contorted by the shock of the terrible death it had met. Her youth had been no protection. I longed to ask if her fascination with crime had been her undoing. But of course she couldn’t answer. Tom’s niece, Alicia, was dead.

  Chapter Four

  I wasn’t there when police broke the news to the family. I was talking to some of the constables after I’d shown them where the body was. At least a dozen members of the police force had arrived on the scene, fanning out along the beach, hanging yellow crime scene tape, setting up lights, photographing the body. Two officers escorted me back to my cottage, where we could all sit and they could record the details in their notebooks by the light of a lamp rather than a flashlight. As a result, I never saw if they brought someone down to the beach to identify Alicia or when they took her body away.

  After I’d recounted what I could remember, I was brought up to the main house and led to the other side of the breezeway. A pair of constables was stationed outside the door of a room I hadn’t seen before, their tall rounded helmets reminding me of those worn by London bobbies.

  The family was gathered in Tom’s library, the space a reflection of the orderly mind of its owner. It was lined with pale gray bookcases with volumes of legal books perfectly aligned in size order. A large mahogany desk occupied one end of the room and held a regiment of pens and pads in size order next to the telephone on an otherwise pristine surface. At the opposite end of the room, closer to the door, was a stone fireplace flanked by two love seats. A pair of French chairs were positioned facing the empty hearth, in front of which was a potted bromeliad in full flower.

  Tom Betterton rose from one of the chairs when I entered. His face was ashen beneath his tanned skin, and his hands trembled when he wiped his damp brow with a white handkerchief.

  “Jessica, how awful for you. I’m so sorry.”

  “Tom, this is much worse for you and your family. You have my sincerest condolences. If there’s anything I can do to help, you have only to ask.”

  “No. No. There’s nothing anyone can do now. She was so young and vibrant. How could anyone—” He broke off, wiping his eyes.

  Stephen, whom I’d only seen fleetingly at the party, put his arm around his stepfather. “C’mon, Tom. Sit down again. Adam will get you a drink.” He beckoned Adam from behind Tom’s back. “Do you want a Scotch?”

  Stephen’s face was somber, but the red rims of his eyes betrayed his emotional state. His sister, Madeline, sat shivering on one of the love seats, comforted by Tom’s girlfrien
d, Margo. Adam, sitting next to her, had deep circles under his eyes.

  Tom waved his hand back and forth. “No alcohol,” he said. “I want to keep my head clear. The police may still have questions.”

  “They’ve already interviewed each of us separately,” Stephen said. “Since they’ve let us be together here, they’re probably done with you for the night.”

  “Even so. I’ll just have a little water.”

  Margo started to stand, but Adam put his hand on her shoulder. “Stay with Madeline,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

  “What time did the party end?” I asked Stephen, who’d taken a seat next to me across from his sister.

  “I was back in my room by eleven thirty, but these evenings don’t usually go late.”

  “Most people had left by midnight,” Madeline put in.

  Margo nodded. “That’s when Norlene left. And the piano player, too.”

  “Just a few stragglers remained after that,” Madeline said. “Once the music stops, people know to go home.”

  Adam returned from the kitchen with a pitcher of ice water and half a dozen tumblers, setting the tray down on a white table between the love seats. He poured the water and offered glasses to the others in the room.

  I hadn’t seen Daisy and Godfrey Reynolds, who were staying at the other cottage, or anyone else who may have occupied one of the guest rooms upstairs. The library held only those of us who’d had lunch together the day before, plus Margo, and minus, of course, the victim.

  A million more questions swirled around my brain, but this was not the appropriate time to ask them. The family was in shock. Not only had their youngest member been murdered, she had been slain in a similar manner as three other women in recent months. But those women had been from the lowest social stratum on the island. They were recent immigrants, so poor and desperate that they’d turned to prostitution to support themselves. Alicia’s circumstances bore little resemblance to theirs. She was a visitor, staying with a wealthy uncle. Had she just been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was the serial killer branching out?