Dixie Browning - Lucy And The Stone

By which Lucy concluded that Maudie Keegan had been married before and had shed her first husband’s name at the same time she’d shed him.

Lucy had gone from Dooley to Hardisson and back to Dooley so fast, even the IRS had trouble keeping up with her. She only hoped her social security would make it through the maze by the time she was old enough to need it.

“I see you stocked up on canned things. Good.” Maudie reached for the box of groceries Jerry was lifting out, and the three of them relayed everything up from the pier, along a winding path through shadowy, fragrant woods, to a small cottage perched a hundred-odd feet from the edge of the sound.

“Is that it?” Maudie Keegan asked when the last of the load was transported. “Okay, then here’s the rundown. Your closest neighbor is a birder named McCloud. He’ll be here all summer. There’s a novelist installed in Blackbeard’s Hole, but you won’t see much of him. He comes every year and holes up until Labor Day, working on the Great American Novel. There’s a couple from Michigan due in tomorrow and two family groups coming the next weekend. Eventually you’ll probably meet everybody, but no one’s obliged to socialize. Rich and I are on the other side of the island in the old lodge.”

Her small hands moved constantly while she spoke, and Lucy watched, mesmerized, murmuring an appropriate response when necessary.

“One of us will pick up mail and messages every day or so, and we have a radio for emergencies. The boats at the pier are for the guests. When we’re full up, we sign up a day in advance so everyone can make plans accordingly, but when there’re only a few people in residence, feel free to take one out. Rich keeps them fueled up. Meanwhile, if you need anything at all, one of us is usually available. Just follow the trail around the island until you come to a place that looks as if it ought to be condemned. That’s ours.”

Bemused, Lucy watched the woman jog through the woods until the lengthening shadows swallowed her up. Turning, she met an all-too-familiar look in the eyes of the young man from the marina.

Evidently, Jerry appreciated king-size blondes with brown eyes, wild hair and big mouths.

She sighed, knowing she would have to make certain things clear to avoid any future misunderstanding. Lucy got along well with people of all ages and sexes, but with the male variety, she had long since learned to get across a subtle message right from the first.

Accessible she was; available she was not.

Stone, once more half-asleep on a drifting inner tube, roused at the sound of voices. Evidently, Lucy Dooley had emerged from her cottage. La Dooley, as he had taken to calling her in his mind. The ex-Mrs. William Carruthers Hardisson.

His quarry, he thought reluctantly.

She had arrived late the previous evening. Stone had heard the sound of an outboard from the screened deck of his own cottage. A few minutes later, he’d seen Maudie Keegan emerge from the woods, followed by the kid from the marina and a tall, shaggy-haired blonde, all carrying boxes, bags and baggage.

Alice hadn’t told him what she looked like, only that she had a common type of prettiness that appealed to some men. Evidently, it had appealed to Billy. The woman had waited until Alice was conveniently out of the way before she’d put the moves on poor Billy.

Poor Billy? Hell, now he was starting to sound like Alice!

Stone had considered wandering over to meet his new neighbor last evening. He’d decided against it. She wasn’t going to do anything the first day or so. Maybe not at all. And as long as she behaved herself, she wouldn’t even have to know he was there.

He continued to watch her from a safe distance, feeling pleasantly relaxed after a half hour spent walking the sandy perimeter of the island. Idly he wondered, without putting any great degree of effort into it, what a woman of her sort was doing coming out to a nowhere place like Coronoke. If her plan was to blackmail the Hardissons now that her ex-husband was in a particularly vulnerable position, it would seem to him that she’d have moved back to Atlanta to be closer to the action. But then, maybe she was just more subtle than the usual run of opportunists.

The devil take La Dooley! Alice had offered him a place to recuperate, and unless the big blonde went into action and called a press conference right here on the island—about as likely as Stone’s winning a Pulitzer prize for the series he’d done on archaeological piracy—he was damned well going to do just that. Recuperate.

With that end in mind, he had selected a book from the cottage’s shelves of dog-eared paperbacks and read until he’d fallen asleep on the sofa last night. He’d wakened just before dawn, at which time he had gone to bed to sleep another few hours.

Quiet. It was a luxury he could easily become addicted to.

He’d checked her cottage first thing upon awakening and seen no sign of life. But then, La Dooley was probably the type who played all night and slept until the sun was well over the yardarm. Which meant the mornings, at least, would belong to him.

At nine he had made himself a sandwich and a pot of coffee for breakfast. At 9:37, feeling remarkably fit considering the bloody and broken mess he’d been when they had hauled his carcass out of Africa a few months ago, he strolled down to the water and launched himself on the inner tube.

Approximately half an hour later, Stone got his first good look at the woman he’d been sent down to Coronoke Island to keep under surveillance.

He’d expected her to be attractive. His aunt had prepared him for that. Billy’s taste in women usually ran to showy types, which was why Stone hadn’t expected a little oatmeal-faced debutante.

But La Dooley wasn’t a little anything. What she was, was...well, big. Big frame, narrow waist, full breasts, generous hips. Legs that started at ground level and steepled all the way up to the stratosphere. Las Vegas showgirl big. Triple-dip, sugar-cone big.

A mullet jumped not three feet away and Stone ignored it, still staring at the big blonde who had taken his little cousin for over half a million and was threatening to come back for seconds. It wasn’t going to take a pair of binoculars and any cloak-and-dagger activity to keep up with La Dooley. If there was one thing she was, it was visible!

Her hairstyle, if you could call it a style, was kinky, streaky and blond, looking as if it hadn’t seen a comb in six months. From this distance, it looked almost natural, but then, on what she’d gouged out of Billy, she could afford the best salon treatment. If what Alice Hardisson had told him was even partially true, she could afford to fly to Paris once a week to have her legs waxed!

Evidently, she’d figured on a bit of privacy to recharge her batteries and work on her story. She wasn’t dressed for an audience. Instead, she was wearing baggy sweats, a pair of shades and, unless he was mistaken, that was an apple she had clutched in her teeth. The symbolism of it suddenly struck him and he began to chuckle. Still grinning at his small private joke, he began paddling toward the shore. The layer of pink on his shoulders, thighs and belly that he’d collected the day before had soaked in overnight, but Stone didn’t kid himself that he was in any condition to stay out through the middle of the day, sunscreen or no sunscreen. From his mother, who’d been Alice Hardisson’s sister, he’d inherited his height and his dark hair. The paternal side of his heritage was pure Highland Scot. Gray eyes, stainless-steel backbone, a taste for Celtic music and a hide that, without some preliminary weathering, tended to burn.

He had lost his weathering, along with a few quarts of blood and more than a few pounds, but he was working on it.

Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at his quarry. As distasteful as he found the whole business, he had given Alice his word that he’d keep the woman away from the gutter press. Alice had done her part by isolating La Dooley in a place with no phones, no fax, limited mail service and no reporters. The rest was up to him.

The trouble was, he hadn’t even started yet and already he was beginning to feel a little bit foolish. He was a journalist. He’d done his share of investigative journalism, but something about this assignment stuck in his craw.

By the time Stone reached shore, La Dooley had disappeared. He figured she’d probably wanted to scope out the territory—maybe drop in on the Keegans and check on the radio link to the outside world. If she was smart—and most predators were—she’d be wanting to get her bearings before she made her move.

If she made her move. Even steel magnolias like Alice Hardisson had been known to make a mistake.

* * *

Reluctantly, Lucy turned to go back inside. In spite of her dark glasses, the sun was blinding. She’d forgotten just how bright it could be near the water, even with the sky beginning to haze over. At the door to her cottage, she yawned, stretched and marveled all over again that she was actually here instead of back in her own sweltering apartment poring over the help wanteds and listening with one ear for the commode to stop running. It took three jiggles after each flush, and she did it so automatically that she couldn’t always remember whether or not she’d forgotten.

She made a pitcher of iced tea and carried it out onto the screened deck. That and the apple she had consumed earlier constituted breakfast. Maybe tomorrow she would fry up a can of corned-beef hash with onions and catsup for breakfast. That had been Pawpaw’s favorite. Familiar foods and familiar music always gave her a safe, comfortable feeling. Maybe she would write to Lillian and Ollie Mae, for old times’ sake.

Or maybe she’d simply vegetate. This was a vacation. Vacations were for being lazy and indulging whims. No telling when she’d get another one.

The trouble was, she was just too excited to vegetate. After showering, she unpacked a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and set off to explore her new surroundings, luxuriating in the raw-silk feel of pine straw under her bare feet and the total absence of traffic noises.

The only sign of life at any of the other cottages was a lineful of towels and bathing suits. Earlier, she’d heard the sound of an outboard heading over to Hatteras. So be it. She liked privacy.

And really, she wasn’t lonely. There were plenty of other people around if she got tired of her own company. The Keegans, for instance. And the reclusive bird-watcher, who was supposed to be her closest neighbor.

All the same, by early afternoon, having walked around the entire island, pausing to watch birds, distant fishermen, even more distant windsurfers, and to examine a set of footprints in the sand—long, fairly narrow, naked and probably male—she was beginning to feel a bit like Robinson Crusoe.

Her stomach growled. She breathed deeply of the fragrance of sun-warmed cedars and salt marsh as she reluctantly turned back toward Heron’s Rest. Funny—when she had accepted this windfall vacation from her ex-mother-in-law, after the first few minutes of shock, all she’d been able to think about was having an entire summer with no clock to punch and no one to fuss at her for playing her music too loud at night. As guilty as she’d felt for accepting anything at all from a Hardisson, she hadn’t been able to resist the lure of a few lazy, idyllic weeks all to herself. But already she was getting restless.

Not only that, she felt guilty. She despised Billy Hardisson, partly because he was a despicable person, but mostly because, with his courtly manners and his easygoing charm, he had made her feel like a lady. And it had all been a lie.