Island of Bones(28)

Louis found the small plastic bottle and poured it over his arm.

“Is it bubbling?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll live then.”

Frank came back toward the light, pulling off his fishing hat, letting loose a bush of gray hair, again far different from the trimmed look Louis had seen in the library. Frank crouched by the fire and added some new branches from the small pile nearby. Louis noticed the fire had been made in a pit scooped out of the sand and lined with shells.

“You’ve been watching me,” Frank said. “Why?”

Louis looked up at Frank but said nothing.

“You are a private investigator, Mr. Kincaid,” Frank said. “I knew that when you came in to get your library card. People hire private investigators to do things. Who hired you?”

“Your daughter,” Louis said as he twisted the cap back on the bottle.

Frank’s expression stiffened. “Diane hired you?”

Louis nodded.

Frank stood up and took a few steps toward the tent, then stared out at the gulf. The sun was gone, leaving only a bruise of purple on the horizon. Louis glanced around the campsite for Frank’s rifle but didn’t see it.

“She’s worried about you,” Louis said.

“She worries too much.”

“She’s your daughter.”

Frank glanced at him then looked back out at the water.

Louis heard a whine in his ear and then the sting of a mosquito at his neck. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze coming off the gulf tonight, nothing to keep the mosquitoes from swarming out from the nearby mangroves. Louis turned his arm toward the lantern to get a look at his watch. Almost seven. The last ferry had left. No way to get off this damn island tonight.

“Daughters,” Frank said softly.

Louis looked up at Frank’s back.

“Most men want sons,” Frank said. “You know, someone who looks like them, acts like them. They want sons so they can see themselves young again and fool themselves into thinking they aren’t going to die.”

Frank turned but didn’t look at Louis. “Daughters are different. They aren’t you. They are what you could have maybe been.”

He met Louis’s eyes. “You got kids?”

Louis shook his head slowly.

“There’s something about a daughter that makes a man do strange things,” Frank said. He looked away again.

“I need to ask you some questions,” Louis said.

“Does my daughter think I’m getting senile?”

“No.”

“Then why did she hire you?”

“She found some newspaper clippings in your desk drawer. One is about the unidentified body found on Monkey Island last week and the other is about a missing girl, from 1953.” Louis could see a tension in Frank’s jaw and a vein moving in his neck. He couldn’t tell if Frank was upset about this revelation or just about the fact that his daughter had gone through his desk.

Frank reached to his pocket and Louis tensed. But Frank just withdrew a pack of cigarettes and some matches. He cupped a match to light the cigarette, took a long slow drag, and let it out in a tired sigh.

“I thought I recognized the dead woman, that’s all,” he said. “I was wrong. I forgot to throw it away.”

“What about Emma Fielding, the missing girl from 1953? Why did you keep that article?”

“I knew her in high school.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“No.”

“Where was high school?”

“Sarasota.”

Louis heard a noise in the brush and jumped.

“Don’t worry, it’s probably just a snake,” Frank said. “Or maybe a boar. There’s a bunch of them running around wild on this island.”

Louis rubbed his burning arm, his eyes still on the brush.

“That can last for days,” Frank said, nodding toward the puncture.

“There’s one more thing, Woods,” Louis said. “There’s a ring at your house. A white coral ring, just like the one the dead woman was wearing.”

Frank’s eyes narrowed as he drew hard on the cigarette.

“Talk to me, Woods.”

Frank’s face grew slack as he took the cigarette out of his mouth. “My daughter thinks I killed those women, doesn’t she?”

Louis drew out his Glock with his stiff right hand, shifting it to his left. He held it sideways, ready but relaxed.

“Yes, she does. She wants you to come with me to the police. That’s why she hired me. She was afraid you would panic if you were just confronted.”

Frank looked over at him and saw the gun. “You don’t have the authority to arrest me, Mr. Kincaid.”

“I don’t want you to try anything stupid either.”