Storm on Wildflower Island Read online

  At 5 a.m. on Monday, Sam couldn’t take it anymore. He got up, dressed quickly, and headed straight for their room. When he arrived, he found that they had never returned. The beds were still made and everything was just how he had left it the day before. Sam needed the room for guests arriving that night, so he promptly cleared their things out. They would just have to pick them up from his office later. If there was a later. He was becoming increasingly worried.

  Then he noticed the blood. Not a ton of it, but blood nonetheless. Did something happen to them? Was there enough blood in the bathroom sink worth worrying about? The husband had probably just cut himself shaving. Maybe not. There seemed to be too much of it to be a shaving cut. It looked like someone had made a cursory effort to wash the blood down the drain. Then he spotted the blood droplets leading from the bathroom sink to the bed. No one had bothered cleaning those up. Sam was beginning to get a really bad feeling about everything.

  Maybe they went home? No, that’s pretty unlikely, Sam thought. They wouldn’t just take off without all of their belongings. Would they? Doubtful. And what about their car? Sam decided to call their house anyway, just to be sure. It couldn’t hurt to try, just in case they did go home. He wasn’t expecting that to be the outcome though.

  “Hello?” It was a small boy’s voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Hi. I’m looking for Steve or Claire Jamison. Do they happen to be home?” Sam asked the boy.

  “Aunt Sissy! The phone is for Mom and Dad!”

  Sam pulled the phone away from his ear since the boy didn’t bother to cover the receiver as he yelled to his aunt. Then he heard the phone drop onto a table or counter, with a thud. A minute later a woman picked up the phone.

  “Hello? Can I help you?”

  “Hi. My name is Sam Evans. I’m the owner of the Miranda Inn and I’m looking for Steve or Claire Jamison. Is this their house? Are they home?”

  “Yes, this is their house, and no, they are not home. They were supposed to be home yesterday, but didn’t show up. Aren’t they there?” She sounded a bit worried to Sam.

  “No, that’s why I’m calling. It seems…” Sam was interrupted by Sissy.

  “I called there late yesterday, but I guess the phones were down due to the storm. I couldn’t get through. I just figured they ended up staying another night. I know that the sheriff told everyone to stay where they were on Saturday night. But it’s now Monday. They should have been home by now. What’s going on?”

  Sissy had to take in a long breath of air. She had been speaking so fast, she didn’t even realize she hadn’t been breathing. She hadn’t been that worried, but suddenly was.

  “Well, I don’t know what’s going on. They never actually checked out of their room yesterday, like they should have. And, all of their belongings are still here. Plus the blood.” The second that last sentence came out of his mouth, Sam regretted it.

  Sissy gasped. “Blood? Oh my god, there’s blood? What’s going on? Where is my sister?!” Sissy was beginning to panic.

  “Okay ma’am, please calm down. It was just a bit of blood in the bathroom sink. Steve probably just cut himself shaving, I don’t really know.” Look what I’ve started, he thought.

  “So where are they?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling you. Is there anywhere else they would have gone, besides home I mean.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Is their rental car there?” Sissy asked.

  “Yes, it’s still here,” Sam told her.

  “Then they have to be there somewhere. They didn’t just disappear.”

  “Um, ma’am...”

  “Sissy, please.”

  “Okay, Sissy. This may sound like a strange question, but have any of your other relatives ever disappeared before? I mean, like, decades ago. And never been found?” Sam was hesitant to ask the question, but he knew it needed to be asked.

  “What? No, not that I know of. Really, what does this have to do with right now?” Sissy was starting to sound quite agitated to Sam.

  “What about grandparents, or even great grandparents? Anything strange happen with them?” Sam knew he was pushing, but it was important that he know.

  “No. Why would that matter anyway? What’s going on?”

  Sissy’s voice was getting louder and more shrill. Sam decided it was time to tone the conversation down a bit.

  “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter, I guess. Sometimes weird things run in families and I just thought I would ask,” Sam tried to explain.

  “Disappearances run in families? That makes no sense at all. Have you called the sheriff about Steve and Claire?” Sissy was tired of their conversation, as they were getting nowhere.

  Do you want me to call the sheriff?”

  “Yes, you should call him. This isn’t like my sister at all. They would not just be out goofing off when we expected them to return yesterday. They wouldn’t do that without calling someone. Something is terribly wrong.”

  “All right. I’ll call him.”

  “Thank you. Please have the sheriff call me after he talks to you,” Sissy requested.

  “I will.”

  Chapter 15

  When the sheriff and a deputy arrived a couple of hours later, Sam showed them the room.

  “If they didn’t check out, then where are their belongings?” It was the very first thing that Sheriff Rex Roberts noticed.

  “Oh, well, I boxed them up and they are in my office,” Sam answered, suddenly sorry that he had done that.

  “Well, what the hell did you do that for? How am I supposed to do my job if you dispose of the evidence?”

  Rex was not pleased one bit and it showed on his face, causing Sam to step back a couple of feet, instinctively. The sheriff was a large man with a booming voice. It was easy for him to intimidate pretty much everyone.

  “We have new guests coming in this afternoon,” Sam told him sheepishly.

  “Not anymore, you don’t. Until we find these people, this is now a crime scene,” the sheriff proclaimed.

  “Now wait a minute,” Sam started to argue. “This is my hotel and I need to make money. I can’t turn paying guests away. I have no other room available for them right now.”

  Sheriff Rex, as most people called him, was forty-ish, and a bit cranky. He didn’t like it at all when people argued with him. He was the sheriff, and as far as he was concerned, it was his way or the highway, one of his often used sayings.

  “That’s not really my problem, now is it?” Rex asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “Fine, whatever.” Sam was annoyed. He hated losing money.

  “Sheriff, come look at this.” It was the deputy that he had brought along.

  Rex and Sam followed him into the small bathroom. It was a tight squeeze for the three of them. When the sheriff gave Sam a look, he quickly left the bathroom, and stood in the main area of the room, waiting.

  A minute later, the sheriff and deputy walked toward Sam, staring intently at the floor. Without thinking, Sam also looked at the floor to see what they were so focused on. Then he looked back up at Rex, eyes wide.

  The look on Rex’s face actually frightened Sam.

  “Now we have a problem,” Rex began. “There is blood in the bathroom. And a blood trail to the bed. Where do you suppose that came from?” He was looking directly at Sam.

  Sam shrugged in response. “How should I know? He probably cut himself shaving.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Sheriff Rex told him matter-of-factly.

  “How do you know that?” Sam asked, wringing his hands in a nervous gesture.

  “Because there is a blood soaked towel in the bathtub. There’s no way that came from shaving. My deputy here is going to gather whatever evidence he can, while you and I go down to your office to get the Jamisons’ belongings. Let’s go.”

  Rex walked out the door, knowing full well that Sam would follow him. He never even looked back to check. When Rex and Sam reached his office,
some of the Jamisons’ belongings were out of the box and sitting on Sam’s desk. Sam walked over and began putting the items back in the box.

  “Why are their things out on your desk?” Rex wanted to know.

  “Oh..well..I..just wanted to make sure I had an inventory of everything they left behind,” Sam stuttered.

  That did not go over well with the sheriff.

  “Is that right? This whole thing is starting to look really fishy to me,” Rex told him. “First they go missing, conveniently during a huge storm. Then we find blood in their room. A lot of blood. Now I find their belongings here in your office and you are rifling through them. Does that sound about right?” Rex narrowed his eyes as he waited for a response from Sam.

  “No, not exactly…” Sam started to say. He was interrupted mid sentence by the sheriff.

  “Not exactly? That’s exactly what I see.”

  Sam did not respond. What else could he say?

  “Where were you all weekend?” Rex asked him.

  “Here. I’m always here. I live here and I work here. Where else would I be?”

  “So you don’t have an alibi?”

  “Do I need one?” Sam began to tremble, deep down in his core.

  The deputy walked in the office door, without knocking. “Sheriff, I’m done upstairs.”

  “Give me that damn box and don’t leave town,” Rex told Sam in a ‘I’m very serious about this’ manner. “We’ll talk later.”

  Rex took the box full of the Jamisons’ belongings and turned and left without another word.

  “Oh, Sheriff?” Sam called after him. His voice was barely audible. He really didn’t want to engage with Rex any more than was absolutely necessary. He half hoped Rex didn’t hear him call out.

  Rex turned to look at him.

  “Claire’s sister asked me to have you call her.”

  Rex turned back toward the door and kept walking without responding to Sam.

  “I have a really bad feeling about this,” Sam said out loud to himself.

  “Hey Tim, come over here,” Sam called to the young valet.

  Tim jogged over to where the boss was standing behind the counter. “Yes?”

  “What do you know about the Jamisons? Steve and Claire are their names.”

  By then, everyone at the Inn had heard about the sheriff showing up to investigate the disappearance of the couple.

  “Not much, really. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just wondering if there is anything that I need to know about them. Anything suspicious maybe. Would they just run off and not tell anyone?” Sam asked him.

  “I really don’t know. I’ve seen them around the island a few times, but I don’t know them at all,” Tim replied.

  “What about this weekend? Did they do anything strange?”

  “Not that I noticed,” Tim told him honestly.

  “Okay, well can you just keep your eyes and ears open for a while? Maybe someone will talk.”

  “Sure,” Tim agreed.

  It didn’t take long before investigators and searchers swarmed the Miranda Inn, as well as the beach and other areas surrounding the property.

  As the searchers combed the beach, one of them called out.

  “I think I found them!” she yelled as she ran up to the command post that the investigations team had set up in the parking lot of the Miranda Inn.

  “Show us where,” Rex ordered.

  Several investigators, as well as the sheriff and most of the searchers, followed her to the spot on the beach, behind some rocks, where the bodies of a man and woman were lying.

  “That’s not them,” Sheriff Rex told the group. “These people are much too old to be them. But now, we need to know who these people are. Get on that,” he ordered one of his deputies. “Okay everyone, let’s keep looking,” he told the group.

  The searchers all dispersed. Several hours later, though the entire grounds of the Miranda Inn and the surrounding beach were thoroughly searched, nothing else was found.

  “Sir,” the deputy walked up to Rex. “I just talked to the sheriff’s office in Bradford. They sent me a photo of two people who went missing on their boat over the weekend. It’s the couple we found. I’ve already coordinated with them to transport the bodies to them.”

  “Good work, son.”

  Chapter 16

  Present Day

  Claire slept fitfully the night they arrived home from the distant past. She had fleeting dreams of her children calling to her, crying for her to come home to them. She awoke at 3 a.m. with tears streaming down her face. As her eyes grew accustomed to the room she was in, she held back even more tears. The room was her own bedroom, but not really anymore. It was her daughter’s bedroom now, and she shared it with her husband, Andrew. Hope had repainted it from the subtle green that it had been, to a bright blue. It was nice, thought Claire.

  After several minutes of lying there, staring at the ceiling, Claire finally gave up and got out of bed. Steve must have been exhausted, because he didn’t stir a bit as she climbed out from under the blankets and reached for the robe that Hope had left for her.

  Claire walked down the dark hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen. It took her a minute to find the coffee mugs and start a pot of coffee. Everything had been moved around the kitchen. She actually liked the newly organized way it was set up. It seemed to flow better. It was so weird to her that just a few days prior, everything had been the way she wanted them. It had all changed so much in such a short time.

  She would have to find out what had happened to all of her own clothes. Not to mention all of her belongings, knick knacks, furniture, jewelry, books, all of it. She had noticed a few of her things around the house, things that were sentimental to Hope and Sissy, no doubt, but most of it was gone. Of course it was. It had been 20 years. Did she really think that they would have left everything in place? A shrine to the parents that were no more? No, that would be a bit macabre.

  Claire poured herself a steaming cup of coffee, added a bit of cream, and sat at the kitchen table alone, staring out the window into the dark night. All alone in a house full of family. A family that she really didn’t know. Sissy had lived 20 more years of her life, while Steve and Claire were walking along that beach a few days ago. She would be different. People change in that amount of time. Would they be able to get their relationship back on track? Claire desperately hoped so.

  Then there were her children. Hope had turned into a beautiful young woman. She still hadn’t see their son, Dustin. They had both grown up without their parents. It was heart-wrenching for Claire to imagine what that must have done to them. Clearly it affected Dustin quite a bit. He had been a sweet child, but the events of their disappearance obviously hurt him terribly, to turn him into the person he grew up to be.

  “Mom?…Mom?…Are you okay?”

  Claire snapped out of the trance she appeared to be in. She hadn’t even realized that she was still staring out the window. But instead of the void of darkness, now the long morning shadows were creeping across the kitchen table, toward her. Her mind had been in a far away land.

  “Oh, Sweetheart, yes, I’m fine. Sorry about that. I guess I was daydreaming. Sit down, please.” Claire gestured toward the open chair next to her. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” She started to get up.

  “No, you stay there,” Hope replied. “I’ll get it.”

  When Hope returned a minute later with two cups, she sat down at the table, and handed one of them to Claire.

  “You looked like you were drinking cold coffee. Here’s a fresh cup.”

  “What?” Claire looked down and smiled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I hadn’t even noticed. So much on my mind, I guess. Thanks.”

  “Would you like something to eat?” Hope asked her mother.

  “No, thank you. I’m fine for now. So, is this strange for you? I mean, you thought we were dead, now we are alive and well and the same age we were when we left,” Claire asked her
daughter.

  “Yes, it’s definitely weird. But it’s probably stranger for you. We didn’t time travel. I mean, that’s what happened, right? I don’t know what else to call it,” Hope told her.

  “Yeah, I guess. All I know is that we went to the Inn for a nice weekend getaway, and arrived home 20 years later. Time travel is really the only explanation, far fetched as that seems. Unless we were abducted by aliens, but I’m guessing that is not the case.” Claire was trying to lighten the mood a bit. Hope smiled back. “Actually, being abducted by aliens is a more plausible explanation than trying to tell people we just somehow missed the last 20 years.” Claire was only half joking.

  “You know,” Claire continued, “I’m only five years older than you are now. That is what’s really weird.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that. How am I going to tell people that my mother is only five years older than me? That should go over well at parties.”

  Mother and Daughter laughed together for the first time in two decades. Once the laughter died down, Claire became a bit melancholy.

  “What are we going to tell people? Right now they all think we’re dead. Then when they see that we are still alive, but haven’t aged at all, what are we going to say? I mean, I should be 50 years old now, but I still look 30.”

  “That’s a really good question, and I don’t know the answer. Maybe you can just say you went on a really long vacation to the spa, and the treatments took 20 years off your face?” Hope offered.