Lethal Affair. Jean Pichon ThomasЧитать онлайн книгу.
left of an old sugar plantation, I bet,” Brenna said. “I read in the guidebook that in the slave days the island once exported a lot of sugar.”
Casey had slowed the car to a crawl. “Understandable,” he responded. “But with the land no longer cultivated, what’s with the fence?”
It was not an old fence. It was a modern, high cyclone fence that seemed to enclose the entire property. He stopped the Toyota in front of a pair of padlocked gates.
Behind them, in the distance up a narrow driveway, was a galleried mansion from another century. Shuttered, it looked abandoned and decaying.
“They called a place like that the great house in the plantation days,” she said.
“Yeah, but why would the security of a fence and locked gates be necessary now? It’s odd.”
“It’s eerie, is what it is. Come on, Casey,” she urged with a shudder, “let’s go on.”
He didn’t argue with her. He sent the silver chariot, as she’d referred to it back at the airport, along the road again.
The route began to climb, winding into the first of the highlands. The vegetation thinned again here.
Rounding a bend, Casey sighted what seemed to be a small, dilapidated general store at the side of the road. He pulled into the gravel parking lot in front of it.
“Why are we stopping here?” Brenna wanted to know.
“I’m thirsty. Let’s see if we can get a couple of bottles of water. And while we’re at it, maybe some answers.”
Chapter 3
The area was modest in size, but every foot of it was crammed from floor to ceiling with merchandise. Had there been time for it, Brenna would have treated herself to a tour of those shelves. Mixed in with a jumble of modern products were such old-fashioned wares as rolls of fly paper and dust-coated, metal electric fans.
A curtain of beads hung in a doorway at the rear. Suddenly it rattled, parting for a young black man who appeared from a back room wearing one of the island’s famous smiles and a head of dyed orange hair.
“Welcome to de store,” he greeted them. “What can I git for you?”
Brenna knew that St. Sebastian had been British owned before it was granted the independence it had requested. This explained the English that was spoken by the native population, although with a flavor of its own possessing a melodic cadence she loved to hear. This young man’s speech was a strong example of that.
“We’d like two bottles of water,” Casey said. “Cold, please, if you have them.”
“What you tink? We don’t have cold here?” Chuckling, he turned away, removed a pair of bottled waters from a cooler and placed them on the counter he stood behind.
Casey paid for them and handed one of the bottles to Brenna.
“De steel band, dey play tonight in Georgetown. Dey something when dey come togedder. Tickets don’t cost you much.”
“Maybe another time,” Casey said. “But there is something I’d like to ask.”
“Sure.”
“We passed this old plantation back down the road. The one with the high fence around it. What can you tell us about it?”
The exuberant smile on the clerk’s face vanished. He was no longer looking at them. His gaze had shifted to something behind them.
Mystified, Brenna turned. An equally puzzled Casey also twisted around. No one else had entered the store. She figured the clerk must be staring through the front window at what was outside.
And this, she convinced herself, was another car that hadn’t been there when she and Casey arrived. It was parked directly across the way at the side of the road, an old sedan as dark a green as the deeply shadowed stretch of jungle she’d been grateful to leave behind them.
The window on the driver’s side of the car had been lowered, revealing the figure at the wheel. He was looking in their direction, a man with a Nordic face, a buzz cut, and cold, blue eyes.
Brenna and Casey faced the clerk again, waiting for the answer to Casey’s question. His dark gaze turned reluctantly back to them.
“Mon, we don’t talk about dat place.”
“Why is that?” Casey persisted.
“You givin’ me too much worry,” he mumbled.
They were clearly being dismissed.
The green sedan was gone when they left the store.
“What was that all about?” Brenna wondered when they’d settled themselves in their own car. “The guy was spooked. You could see it in his face.”
Casey shook his head. “Dunno. Maybe our mystery plantation is haunted, and the guy in the green heap is its ghost.”
“With old legends in the West Indies so common, that’s not so funny.”
“But nothing to do with us.” Casey started the Toyota and backed out onto the road. “Come on, let’s go find your waterfall.”
His intention wasn’t so simply achieved. A mile or so farther up the road Brenna caught a movement in the angled outside mirror on her side of the car. Leaning to the right for a better view, she was able to identify the green sedan tailing them.
She’d had no reason before this to check the road behind them, but it did seem that the vehicle had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Tempting as it was, she resisted the urge to call it a phantom. Casey would have loved teasing her about more ghosts.
“Casey—”
“Yeah, I see him. Spotted him in my rearview,” he said, indicating the driver’s mirror above his head.
“Um, you don’t think he’s deliberately following us? I mean, his car back at the store was headed in the direction we’re going. Now he’s somehow ended up behind us.”
“Could be he waited off on some side lane for us to pass and then pulled out.”
“But why? Why should he want to follow us?”
Casey had no explanation for her. His only response after a few seconds was a simple request. “Break out that map of yours again, will you?”
“You want me to see if that side lane behind us does exist?”
“Nope. I want you to see if there’s another road ahead of us branching off this one.”
That didn’t make sense to her. “For what reason?”
“I want to test something.”
Brenna waited for a further explanation, but again he gave her none. Grumbling to herself, she consulted the map as he’d asked.
“There is another road up ahead on the right, but it doesn’t make any more sense than your wanting to know it’s there.”
“Why is that?”
“Because after winding all over the place, it ends up looping back to join this one. And this one is a much shorter, more direct route to the falls.”
“The other road...lots of twists and turns, huh?”
“Yes.”
Casey nodded, looking satisfied. Why, she couldn’t imagine, and this time she didn’t bother asking him.
“I suppose,” she theorized, “since its being there at all doesn’t make sense when it doesn’t go anywhere but back to this road, it must have been constructed earlier. And then this one was built later, cutting off the old one to make a shorter route.”
“Sounds right. Our green sedan is still behind us,”