The Men of Thorne Island

“Do we really need to go through this again?”

“No. We have salami.”

He took bread and meat slices from the refrigerator. “And to drink?”

“You tell me.”

“Actually I have six different brands of beer—”

She wasn’t surprised.

“—and one Mountain Dew.”

“Shall I fight you for the Mountain Dew?”

He took the can from the refrigerator and tossed it to her. “No. I’ll let you win this one.” He pointed to a stool next to the counter. “Have a seat. I’ll even cook.”

The entire meal process took less than thirty minutes from preparation to cleanup. And during that time the few sentences Sara and Nick spoke to each other involved passing the condiments and a smattering of comments about Millicent Thorne. Sara admitted that she hadn’t known her great-aunt very well and even expressed her guilt about that situation.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “You would have liked her. In fact, I see similarities between the two of you.”

Since he didn’t elaborate, Sara decided to accept his statement as a compliment.

Once the dishes were put away, Nick went out the back door and stood on the stoop. “Will you be needing anything else from the refrigerator tonight?” he asked through the screen door.

“No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“I always turn off the generator before I go to bed. Can’t see wasting fuel. The food stays cold all night if the refrigerator door’s not opened, and I’m an early riser.”

He was turning off the generator? Sara’s stomach did a somersault of alarm. “But does that mean the lights won’t work?”

“Sure does. Take one of the lanterns from the parlor. They’re not just decoration. There should be plenty of oil in the well. You’ll find a flashlight in the pantry, too.”

Resigned to the conventions of Thorne Island, she got the flashlight and watched Bass step down from the back porch. His limp was more obvious now. In fact, a tightening of his facial muscles indicated that he was in pain. Since they’d just shared a few companionable moments, Sara felt comfortable enough to ask, “Are you all right, Mr. Bass?”

He looked up at her from the yard. “What do you mean?”

“Your limp. I couldn’t help noticing.”

“And you want to know why I have it?”

“I don’t mean to pry, but if you’d like to tell me…”

“A few years ago I was shot. The bullet entered at the base of my spine and pretty well screwed things up.”

The flashlight clattered to the floor. “You were shot?”

“Yep. So when I told you earlier that if you meant to kill me, you’d better use a gun, I really wasn’t relishing the idea all that much. Good night, Sara.”

That was obviously all the information she was going to get. She picked up the flashlight and spoke to his dark form as it blended with the angular shadows of the inn. “Good night, Nick.”

THE NEXT MORNING Sara awoke to the sound of voices filtering through her second-story window. She got out of bed and opened the slats of her shutter just enough to peek outside. A cool breeze washed over her, and she breathed in the fresh, heady scent of the flowers in the porch baskets.

Four men stood in the overgrown front yard of the inn just beyond the edge of the porch eaves. Sara could see three of them clearly and just an arm and a foot of the fourth. She recognized Dexter Sweet, his huge arms bulging from the short sleeves of an athletic T-shirt. She heard the low timbre of Nick Bass’s voice coming from under the porch. She didn’t know the other two men, but assumed they were the pair Dexter had mentioned the day before—Brody and Ryan.

One man was short, thin, with brown, shoulder-length hair bound in a leather strap at his nape. The other was medium height, with a middle-aged paunch and slumping shoulders. “Ol’ Brody,” Sara concluded. He wore a canvas fishing hat with an ageless collection of rusty lures pinned to every square inch. Definitely the island’s unimaginative grocer.

Sara tuned in to the conversation when Brody was speaking or, more appropriately, complaining. “Hell-fire! How long is she going to stay?”

Nick answered in a harsh whisper, but Sara couldn’t make out the words.

The small man with the ponytail spoke next. He glanced up several times at the second story. Ducking out of sight, Sara was able to interpret his opinion from the tone of his voice. He didn’t seem any more pleased about her arrival than Brody had.

When she risked a peek through the shutters again, she saw Brody nodding his head, causing the lures to bob up and down. “I agree with Ryan. I don’t cotton to having a woman snooping around our island. Millie Thorne left us alone.”

Dexter raised his hands as if to quiet the complaints of his friends. “Now don’t go borrowing trouble,” he said. “Like Nickie told me last night, she probably—”

Nick stopped Dexter’s words with a sharp warning and stepped away from the porch. He looked up at Sara’s window. She jerked back again. Then the men moved down the crumbling walkway of the inn toward the path to the harbor.

Sara opened the door to her wardrobe, took out underwear, a pair of jeans and a San Francisco T-shirt and tossed them onto her bed. Then she slipped her arms through the sleeves of her terry cloth robe and tied it in front. Walking down the hall to the bathroom, she mumbled to herself, “Thanks for the welcoming committee, boys, and have a nice day!”

THE COZY COVE INN was an interesting blend of two centuries. While the decorative moldings and wooden ceiling planks in every room were clearly from the 1890s, the bath fixtures probably dated from the 1950s. Small black-and-white tiles lined the lavatory walls and the small circular shower, and provided a nice backdrop for white porcelain fixtures. The toilet with its oddly squat shape worked sufficiently well, but the night before, Sara had carefully checked the oak seat for splinters before using it.

The inn had an adequate hot-water heater, though insufficient pressure. It took Sara longer than normal to rinse shampoo from her hair.

It was eight-thirty by the time she’d dressed, dried her hair and secured it in a clip at her nape. Obviously morning activities started early on Thorne Island. With Nick gone, she’d have to scrounge around his kitchen again in search of coffee. A trip to Brody’s grocery store and a thorough cleaning of her own area of the big kitchen were first on her list after she had a jolt of caffeine. She didn’t intend to “borrow” from Nick any more than she had to.

With sunlight streaming in the windows, the clean section of kitchen gleamed even more brightly than it had the night before. Unfortunately the grimy section looked even worse. But Sara’s resolve was bolstered by the sight of the automatic drip coffeemaker on Nick’s counter. Dark brew steamed from the glass pot, and a clean crockery mug and sugar packets sat next to it. Nick had obviously left the supplies where she would find them. Sara smiled to herself. If he didn’t work so hard at being annoying, Sara could almost tolerate Nick for this one friendly gesture.

After her second cup, she took cleaning supplies from the cupboard and set to work on the stove. Layers of grime slowly dissolved under the onslaught of bleach and pine-scented solvent. An hour later she decided to tackle the brick floor and set about finding a mop and a bucket. She spied a wood-paneled door in the middle of an interior kitchen wall and thought it might be a cleaning closet. She grabbed the knob, but Nick’s voice stopped her from turning it.

“I don’t think you should go into the cellar,” he warned through the back screen door. The hinges squeaked as he opened it and came inside. He wore a pair of cargo shorts that showed off muscular, tanned calves. A T-shirt with the faded logo of a Cleveland tavern on the front clung to his broad chest and disappeared into the waistband of the shorts. A Cleveland Indians ball cap sat low on his forehead, but she still had an all-too-intimate look at his silver-flecked eyes and freshly shaven face.

For a brief moment Sara found it difficult to breathe. She covered the dysfunction with a hard swallow. Nick Bass had a certain indefinable appeal in the bright light of day, even if he was telling her she couldn’t do something. “Why not?” she said. “What’s down there?”

He settled onto the bar stool and shoved the hat back. “Spiders. Cobwebs. Some old barrels and a few dusty bottles of wine.”

“I’m not too excited about the spiders, but I’d still like to go down.”

“You can’t see anything because the lightbulb burned out years ago.”

“And you never replaced it?”

He shrugged. “I will…tomorrow.”

A burned out lightbulb was hardly an insurmountable problem. “I’ll use the flashlight,” Sara said.

“Suit yourself, but if it’s wine you’re after, I’ve brought a few bottles upstairs already. You’re welcome to sample those.”