Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 by Dead Man's Island Page B

several. Stepping-stones led to the cabana. A nearby wooden hot tub was convenient both to the pool and to Chase and Miranda’s lanai.
    I followed another oyster-shell path, this one heading due south, passed the front of the house, and reached a wide shell path that marked the perimeter of the cultivated property. I turned east. The shells crunched underfoot, and I smelled the winy scent of the motionless cypress sentinels always on my right.
    Two big buildings sat about a hundred yards behind the main house, both thickly screened by pittosporum bushes. I guessed that the two-story stucco provided quarters for the servants. The square, single-story, cement-block building with two overhead garage-style doors had to be the storage facility. I tried a side door. It wasn’t locked. But, on an island with controlled access, why would it be? I stepped inside and heard the hum of a generator. The air was scented with gasoline. Of course, here was the supply of electricity for the island. I flipped a switch. Bright overhead lights beamed down on a collection of lawn and garden machinery: a tractor, a riding lawn mower, edgers, blowers. There were several rooms: one a walk-in freezer, another stocked with lawn and garden supplies, another a mini-warehouse for foodstuffs. All were superbly supplied and meticulously clean.
    I came back out into the twilight. Behind the storage building I found a neat landfill and an incinerator. A wisp of smoke curled out of the incinerator chimney. A luxuriant herb garden flourished between the storage building and the servants’ quarters. Thepittosporum and banana shrubs provided a lovely and aromatic screen between the service buildings and the main house. A wedge of pines separated the service buildings from two clay tennis courts. These, too, remained private, with a grove of weeping willows between the courts and a small cinder jogging track. Everything had been carefully designed so that it was possible to enjoy any aspect of the island in almost total seclusion.
    Chase’s vacation retreat had all the appurtenances of the most elegant spa. But the springy grass and sandy soil couldn’t be disguised and, once I passed the cypress border, I faced the harsh reality of Dead Man’s Island: waxy-leaved live oaks, crackling-frond palmettos, prickly slash pines; sea myrtle, yucca and bayberry, yaupon, winged sumac, and Hercules’-club; cinnamon ferns, ebony spleenwort, and resurrection ferns; cordgrass, sea oxeye daisy, and cattails.
    There was only one break in that exuberant fecundity, another oyster-shell track plunging into the untamed maritime forest. I took only a few steps, then knew this exploration would have to wait for daylight. Beneath the canopy of trees, it was already dark, a darkness that had never known electric lights. Leaves rustled, something seemed to slip beneath the bushes. I smelled rotting plants, pine resin, dank water, insecticides. Despite the latter, the whine of insects rose above the crackling of twigs.
    I swatted a mosquito and turned to go, then stopped short and looked into the wary, intelligent eyes of a crouching raccoon. The masked face appearedamused, but I knew that was only an anthropomorphic reaction on my part.
    But I carried with me a memory of that sleek, sardonic, uncaring face as I retraced my steps. I used the entrance, also unlocked, at the end of the south wing and ran lightly up the stairs to the second floor. I had satisfied the itch but only supplanted it with a different, less easily assuaged discomfort.
    As I stepped into my pink room, I was trying to dispel the sense of alienation and menace my walk had given me. I was so preoccupied that I almost passed by the desk without noticing.
    I suppose if I hadn’t been in so many hundreds of strange rooms in past years, sometimes in countries where the press is often perceived as an enemy, I might not have noticed. But I have been in those rooms … and I did notice.
    My purse, which I had through