Death in a Beach Chair

TWENTY-SIX

Susan had a lot to think about on the ride back to Compass Bay. She made two decisions. First, she would tell Kathleen what her conversation with the bartender had revealed. She wanted to know if Jerry had said anything about his meeting with Allison to his wife. And, second, she would not mention Jerry’s insistence on the similarity between his two wives to Kathleen. It could only hurt her.

But she couldn’t find Kathleen. Jed, enjoying a late lunch poolside, reported not seeing her all morning, but offered to buy them both lunch when she appeared. That way, he explained, yawning, Susan could tell them both about her visit with Jerry. Susan just smiled and walked off. Kathleen wasn’t in her cottage or on the beach. Susan thought for a moment that she had discovered her stretched out on a lounge by the bar, but that sunbather turned out to be male.

Susan exchanged greetings with the other guests, but didn’t ask about her friend, not wanting to increase the attention their group was already receiving. She was ready to give up and rejoin her husband, when she noticed something unusual lying next to one of the kayaks turned upside down beside the dock.

Once Susan realized what she was seeing, she abandoned her reluctance to draw more attention to their group. She forgot everything in her overwhelming urgency to get help. She screamed, and within minutes help had arrived-if everyone in the resort, staff and guests, could be called help.

Kathleen was unconscious, sprawled on the beach, half-hidden behind a lightweight plastic kayak. Susan, trying to control her own panic, couldn’t see anything obviously wrong-no blood, no bullet holes, no scarves wrapped tightly around her neck-but she was relieved when the female half of the honeymooners identified herself as a doctor and took over the examination.

“Does this woman have diabetes or any sort of condition that might cause her to pass out?” the young woman asked.

“No, nothing like that,” Susan assured her.

“No, I see now.” The doctor gently cradled Kathleen’s head in her bejeweled hand. “She has quite a large egg here. She must have slipped and fallen and hit her head on the stone wall.”

Kathleen began to regain consciousness. Susan was slightly amazed to hear her friend say “What happened to me?” just like actors returning to consciousness in movies and on TV. “You fell and hit your head,” Susan said, speaking up before anyone else could.

Kathleen looked up at her friend. “My head does hurt. I-can someone help me back to my cottage? This sand isn’t very comfortable.”

“You shouldn’t stand up right away,” the doctor insisted, firmly pushing Kathleen’s shoulders back into the sand.

“Go get the board! Right away!” Susan recognized Lila’s voice. And so, apparently, did her staff. People dashed off, and in moments, James had organized three other men and, with their help, placed Kathleen on a glossy surfboard, and carried her back to her cottage.

Lila and the doctor went in, the carriers came out, and Susan, as well as most of the other guests, waited on the beach for some word. Soon Lila reappeared. “Mrs. Gordon is going to be just fine,” she announced.

“I want to see her,” Susan spoke up.

“You’re Susan Henshaw?” The doctor appeared by Lila’s side. “She wants to see you. But she really should be kept quiet. If she shows any signs of concussion…”

“I’ll give you a yell,” Susan answered. “My son played on every school team possible when he was young. I know about concussions.”

“Excellent. Then I’ll leave her in your hands.”

The lights were off in the Gordons’ cottage. Kathleen lay on the bed, a damp washcloth folded in half and draped across her forehead. Susan tiptoed across the room, enjoying the cool breeze generated by the ceiling fan. “Kathleen?” Susan whispered.

Kathleen opened her eyes and smiled. “Susan, thank God! Someone hit me!”

Susan dashed to her friend’s side. “Are you sure? How do you know? Do you know who did it?”

“I’m sure. I didn’t fall, for heaven’s sake. I was sitting on one of the kayaks on the beach. It was turned upside down, and someone smacked me on the head with something very hard. I swear I saw stars.”

“Do you have any idea who did it? Did you recognize any distinct scent that might offer a clue? Or see anyone out of the corner of your eye? Or anything?”

“No. Nothing. I may have heard someone coming up behind me, but I didn’t turn around and look. I wanted to be left alone.”

“How long were you unconscious?” Susan asked.

Kathleen languidly lifted her left arm and peered at her watch. “Not terribly long. Maybe half an hour.”

“Where were you all morning? Jed said he couldn’t find you.”

“I took a walk on the beach.” Kathleen sighed and closed her eyes again. “I didn’t want to see anyone. I’m so worried about Jerry, and I just can’t think of anything to do to help him. Except…”

“Except what?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably a stupid idea. I’ll tell you about it… later.”

“Are you feeling nauseous?” Susan asked. “Shall I call the doctor back?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Really. You know, this might help Jerry.”

“How?”

“If he’s guilty, why would someone want to hurt me? Doesn’t it make sense that the murderer hit me over the head? So isn’t that proof that Jerry’s innocent?”

“I suppose you could say that,” Susan agreed reluctantly. If Kathleen, after her experience as a police officer, could believe that, she might actually be suffering from a concussion.

“I think we should call the local police and tell them what happened to me just now,” Kathleen insisted, starting to sit up.

“Okay. But you have to lie down. And I need to talk to you before we call anyone. I saw Jerry!”

“How is he?” Kathleen asked as though she hadn’t seen her husband herself an hour or so before Susan’s visit.

Susan smiled. “He’s just fine. He-he sent his love.” Well, she told herself, he would have if he hadn’t been so busy babbling about the supposed similarities between his two wives. “But I stopped in a bar downtown before coming back here.”

“Susan, that doesn’t sound like you! Did Jerry say something that upset you?”

“No,” Susan lied. “I was thirsty. I ordered lemonade. I had no idea that it would be full of rum and vodka.”

Kathleen grinned. “Not a bad surprise.”

“Well, I wasn’t driving. Anyway, the bartender told me something that surprised me, too.”

“That Jerry and Allison met in his bar the afternoon of the day she was killed.”

“You know! Kathleen, how do you know that?”

“He told me. Remember I was looking for him that day? Well, I was furious that he had vanished like that without telling me, and that night we had a big argument. I asked him what was going on, and he-” She stopped and looked toward the front door. “Look outside and make sure we can’t be overheard before I go on, will you?”

“Of course.” Susan leapt up and looked out the door. It was a gorgeous afternoon, and the guests and staff could have been models posing for photographs advertising the joys of Compass Bay. They were swimming, sunning, kayaking, playing cards in the bar. No one was skulking around the Gordons’ cottage eavesdropping on Susan and Kathleen. “We’re fine,” she assured her friend, coming back inside and moving near the bed. “Now go on. You and Jerry had an argument and…”

“And he told me that Allison had been following him around ever since we got here. If he sat by the pool, she pulled up a chair close by. If he went for a walk on the beach, she appeared there. He said he had gone into town to get away from her, and she was sitting in the bar he went into as though she was waiting for him to arrive.”

“Really? But how would Allison have even known he was going to be in town?”

“I wondered that myself. But I was in the office the other day when the honeymooners-I suppose we should call them the doctor and her husband rather than the honeymooners now-well, they asked Lila to call them a cab to take them to town, and it occurred to me that Allison could have been following Jerry around and overheard him do the same thing. Then she left before he did and just waited for him to run into her there.”

“I suppose that’s possible. It’s an awfully small place. It would be easy for that to happen.” Susan thought for a moment. “I think we should call the police and tell them about the person who assaulted you.”

“Oh, I do, too. Maybe they’ll free Jerry before dinner.”

“Kath…”

“Susan, I know it’s not realistic, but I can hope, can’t I?”

“Sure. You stay here. I’ll go over to the office and call them.”

“Great.” Kathleen closed her eyes, and Susan headed off on her errand.

Lila was in the office and she looked up, concerned, when Susan walked in. “Is Mrs. Gordon feeling worse? Shall I call for a doctor?”

“No, Kathleen’s fine. She wants to talk to the police. I wonder if you would call them for her.”

“Of course. May I ask what’s the matter?”

“I think Kathleen should be the person to talk about this,” Susan said.

“Of course. There should be an officer at her cottage in a very few minutes. Perhaps the lawyer who is handling Mr. Gordon’s case should be called, too.” Lila’s hand hovered in the air above the phone.

“No, I think just the police. Thanks. I’ll go back and tell Kath that they’re on the way.”

“Good. Mrs. Henshaw…”

“Yes?”

“Our island police may not wear fancy uniforms or have a lot of sophisticated equipment, but they’re not idiots.”

“I-I don’t know what you’re saying,” Susan admitted.

“Just that they are not as credulous as you would like to believe.”

“I don’t believe that they are anything like that,” Susan said firmly, turning and heading back to Kathleen’s cottage.

As Lila had promised, two uniformed police officers were on the deck of the cottage almost before Susan had finished telling her friend what Lila had said.

As well as being prompt, they were polite, professional, and completely unwilling to believe Kathleen’s story.

“I think you fell and hit your head,” the youngest officer stated. “Head injuries can be strange. You may have imagined the big man coming up and hitting you.”

“I didn’t say anything about a big man! I said someone! How do you think I got this bump on my head if someone didn’t hit me?”

“You fell. You hit your head. It happens,” the older man said in an offhanded manner.

“I’m telling you that I was assaulted. You should file a report. You should be asking me questions. You should start to look for whomever it was who did this to me! You are holding my husband without any real reason at all, and there is someone loose here who has criminally assaulted me! That person and the murderer could be-very possibly are-the same person! And you’re doing nothing!”

“Mrs. Gordon, we are not doing nothing. We will file a report, which will require much paperwork. We will investigate your allegation that this strange man-or woman-knocked you out. If there is a crime here, we will do our very best to find the person who committed it. But there is no connection that I or my partner can see between this and the brutal murder of Miss Allison McAllister. Except for the involvement of your family in both crimes.”

“I-what? But that’s ridiculous!”

“Not so ridiculous. Let me tell you a story.”

Kathleen ground her teeth so tightly that Susan could hear them skid, but she merely nodded and the police officer began.

“Years ago when my father joined the police force, there was another murder on the island. A young woman kill another young woman. She think if this other young woman dead, then the woman’s fiancé will fall in love with her and marry her. But he did not love her, and in time, he found another woman to love. So, as you might guess, the woman who murdered his first fiancé murdered the second. That’s when we caught her, of course.”

“So what? You just proved what I was saying to you! If you think Jerry killed Allison, do you think he assaulted me, too? While you have him locked up? Are you nuts?” she asked, sitting up in bed and scowling at the men.

“This is a small island, Mrs. Gordon, but we have our bad people, too. A person who is locked up, a person of means as your husband appears to be-” He stopped and looked around the luxury cottage before going on. “A person like that could hire a bad person to do these things for him.”

“My husband would not hire someone to hurt me!” Kathleen said, standing up and yelling right in the oldest officer’s face. “Get out of my cottage. Now!”

“We must file report. We’ll be back for you to sign it,” the younger man said.

“I won’t sign anything,” Kathleen said, turning her back on the men. “Now please leave my cottage.”