Jean Barrett - White Wedding

“Had to be,” Hale muttered.

“But why?” Allison demanded angrily. “Who?”

They were questions that haunted each of them, but no one answered her. There were no answers. There was only the dismay.

“I don’t understand,” Allison persisted. “Teddy was supposed to have been alone on the island. Lane, wasn’t that what Dorothy told us this afternoon? That Nils left Teddy here all on his own yesterday and returned to the mainland.”

“Yes,” Lane agreed softly, “that’s what she said.”

No one in the room questioned this claim, but Lane noticed several gazes turning in the direction of the kitchen where Nils Asker was busy with the phone. She knew what they were wondering. She couldn’t help wondering it herself. Just how accurate was Dorothy’s assertion?

“Obviously,” Hale observed, “Teddy wasn’t alone. There was a killer with him. And either that someone was here the whole time or he arrived after Nils left.”

“Please,” Ronnie begged loudly, “will all of you just stop talking about it? Isn’t it bad enough that we had to see him like that?”

“Scalped, you mean,” Stuart reminded them callously, rejoining the group.

Ronnie, clutching her brandy glass, made a face of revulsion. “Only a monster could have performed something so indecent.”

Lane cast a swift glance in Jack’s direction. He was leaning against the other side of the fireplace. He had been quiet during the exchange of speculations, but she was close enough to hear him softly and slowly whistling under his breath. An unconscious habit that she recognized from the days of their marriage. It meant that systematic scientist’s brain of his was dissecting a problem.

“Yeah,” Stuart said, offering his dark warning to Ronnie, “and that monster could be lurking on the island right now. Any of you thought of that?”

The boy plainly enjoyed pressing his mother’s buttons, Lane thought. Ronnie’s reaction, a yelp of alarm, didn’t disappoint him.

It was then that Jack stood away from the fireplace and informed them mildly, “I don’t think so. I think the killer left the island. And his victim wasn’t scalped.”

“Of course he was scalped,” Ronnie insisted, as though he were trying to cheat her out of a perverse pleasure. “We all saw it, didn’t we?”

Jack shook his head. “We only thought we did. It had the illusion of a scalping because we were down there with those native remains, and there was an arrow in his chest. But the head had been shaved, not scalped.”

“Either way,” Dan said, “it was senseless.”

“Not from the killer’s viewpoint,” Jack maintained. “From what you’ve said about Teddy Brewster, I understand he had a mane of flaming hair and a flowered overcoat that was practically a trademark. Both the hair and the coat are missing.”

“Disguise.” Lane suddenly realized what he meant. “The murderer used them as a disguise to get off the island. He left as Teddy.”

“That’s right,” Allison said, remembering. “The Arnolds told us back at the dock that the rented snowmobile had been returned and that Teddy’s car was gone.”

Jack nodded. “All cover for the killer and a way to keep the florist from being missed right away.” His broad shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “It’s conjecture, of course, but I think it’s the right explanation.”

Ronnie sagged with relief in her chair. “As long as it means there’s no longer a homicidal maniac loose on this island, that’s all I care about.”

But Hale wasn’t ready to let the subject go. “Genuine scalping or not, the guy still died with an arrow in his chest. And all that Indian stuff down there... Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

Allison turned to him, her voice sharp. “What are you saying, Hale?”

His gaze drifted in the direction of the kitchen. “You tell me. Or better still—” his look shifted toward the judge “—let Dan here tell us. You understand the Menominee lingo, Dan. I’ve heard you say so. So what were Chris Beaver and his sister telling each other out there in the kitchen when we started down to the caves?”

“Nothing important,” the judge demurred.

“Come on, you can do better than that. They were outraged, weren’t they, because they thought we were about to desecrate the sacred burial grounds of their ancestors?”

Dan, uncomfortable and reluctant, resisted Hale’s accusation. “That’s an exaggeration. They simply minded our...well, casual attitudes about the visit. I’m sure that’s all it was. You have to remember that the Menominee have resided in Wisconsin for more than five thousand years. Some say as long as ten thousand years. And, naturally, their descendants are going to have some feelings about—”

“Uh-huh,” Hale interrupted dryly, “the violation of ancient graves. Wonder if that’s how Teddy Brewster ended up down there? Wonder if he just wanted to have a look at those graves and somebody minded? ”

Allison rounded on him indignantly. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting? Because if you are—”

“I’ll tell you what he’s suggesting,” interrupted a coldly angry voice from the shadows of the dining room. “That I had something to do with the florist’s death.”

The startled members of the group around the fireplace looked up to find Chris Beaver standing in the doorway. There was a dangerous expression in his dark eyes as he moved rigidly into the lounge.

“That’s right, isn’t it, McGuire?” he challenged Hale.

Shaking off Allison’s restraining hand, Hale rose to his feet and confronted the other man. “Maybe it’s more than just a suggestion,” he said recklessly. “Maybe it’s an accusation.”

An outraged Chris charged before anyone could stop him. His fist slammed into Hale’s face. Ronnie screamed as the others came to their feet. But it was Jack who sprang between the two men, separating them before the incident resulted in a full-scale brawl.

“You all right, McGuire?” he demanded.

The lawyer, pressing a handkerchief to his bleeding nose, nodded and glared at his attacker. “You’ve got a bad temper, Beaver. Some people might say it’s a murderous one.”

Chris would have gone for him again, but Jack held him off. “That’s enough,” he ordered. “From both of you. No more senseless accusations and no more wild punches. We’ve got enough to handle without you two losing your heads.”

Chris, looking grim, pulled away from Jack. Without a word he turned and headed toward the kitchen. Allison started to go after him.

“Chris, wait!”

The proud, retreating figure never paused. He brushed silently past his bewildered brother-in-law, who had just arrived in the lounge doorway, and disappeared into the darkened dining room.

A sickened Lane, suddenly needing to put distance between herself and the nasty scene she’d just witnessed, left the fireplace and drifted across the room to one of the French doors overlooking the bay. From this position she sympathetically watched Allison realize that it was her fiancé she was supposed to comfort, not Chris Beaver. Allison tried to put a concerned hand on Hale’s arm, but he shook it off.

With Hale in this kind of nasty mood, Lane wondered how she would ever find the courage to approach him on the subject of her sensitive mission. Or whether now there would even be the opportunity. But she’d promised, so eventually she must find a way.

An uncertain, puzzled Nils Asker went on hovering in the doorway until Jack pressed him for the news they were all waiting to hear.

“How soon can we expect the sheriff?”

The lanky Nils shook his head, reporting gloomily, “We can’t. Not for now, anyway. I kept trying, but the phone is useless. It’s that devil of a wind out there. Communication tower on the mainland must be down. It can happen along the peninsula with these cellular phones, the power getting interrupted when the weather’s nasty like this.”