Sunbaked Read online

  The first thing that struck Nina was the row of large windows with a wall-to-wall view of the turquoise sea. The floors throughout were rough planked wood, and the once-white walls were stained with rectangular shapes where pictures had been removed. It wasn’t in perfect shape, but Nina was excited, imagining it with a fresh coat of white paint and polished wood floors. The furnishings were simple but adequate: a stove, fridge, and sink set into a countertop that ran along the wall at one end of the main room, a wooden table and four chairs set in front of it; a faded chintz sofa and a pair of easy chairs grouped around a coffee table at the other end of the room; a built-in bookcase. And in the bedroom, a wrought iron bedstead and wooden bureau filled the space.

  “I thought you might not feel like going shopping as soon as you got in, so I picked up a few groceries for you,” said Pansy, opening the fridge. “There’s bread, cheese, butter, milk, pineapple juice, orange juice, Susie’s cocoplum jam—fabulous—bananas, and, of course, a little bottle of rum to help you get in the groove.”

  “Pansy, that is so nice of you,” said Nina. Now that she was here, the fact that she knew absolutely no one on Pineapple Cay hit home. She was grateful for Pansy’s kindness.

  “Not at all,” said Pansy. “I’ve got to go collect my kids from school, and I’m sure you’re eager to unpack.” She looked doubtfully at Nina’s single duffel, sitting on the floor by the front door. “Anyway, my husband, Andrew, said he would watch the kids tonight, so if you’re up for it, I thought I’d take you out to The Redoubt for a bite and introduce you to some of the locals. Andrew just got back from a ten-day skiing trip with his buddies in Canada, so he’s on duty all week.”

  “Um, that would be great,” said Nina.

  “OK,” said Pansy. “Let’s meet there about five thirty. You can’t miss it. It’s on the main drag, ten minutes’ walk toward town. Just follow the music and the delicious smells. Have fun settling in!”

  2

  Nina watched Pansy’s turquoise golf cart drive away and then took an exploratory walk through the three tiny rooms of her new home. She poked her head in the bathroom. It was worn but clean. Nothing a coat of paint couldn’t fix. She turned on the tap in the tub and pulled the lever to start the shower. The pressure was OK, and the water came out nice and warm. The toilet flushed. One less worry. She wandered into the kitchen and opened a cupboard. There was a stack of plates and bowls and a few glasses and mugs. She pulled open a couple of drawers and found a tray of cutlery and some other useful cooking implements. Under the sink was a bottle of dish soap and a few dishcloths. Another thing she wouldn’t have to sort out.

  Nina poured herself a glass of orange juice from the carton Pansy had left, pushed open the screen door, and stepped onto the veranda. She slipped off her sandals and jacket and rolled up the cuffs of her jeans, then stepped down onto the sand. It felt divine under the soles of her feet and between her toes. Like a mini massage. A narrow, sandy path through low dunes covered in cocoplum bushes led to the beach about twenty feet away. It was shaded in places by towering palms that dwarfed the cottage. Nina picked her way along the path, onto the beach, and down to the water’s edge. She walked into the gentle surf. The water was crystal clear and unexpectedly warm. In the shallows, tiny fish darted about in schools. The tide was going out. The water had receded out into the bay, uncovering inviting white sandbars in stripes and swirls. Way, way out, she could see a fisherman standing thigh deep on the flats casting a fly rod. There wasn’t another soul on the beach.

  To her right, the sand made a long, sweeping curve out to a point of land jutting out into the water about five hundred yards from where she stood. At the tip of the rocky point was a wooden deck with a ring of Adirondack chairs on it. About a hundred yards back from deck, Nina could see the white rooftops of several small buildings otherwise hidden from view by green foliage. A sandy path emerged from the vegetation onto the beach, where three or four motorboats were pulled up onto the sand. That must be the fishing lodge, thought Nina.

  She swiveled her head and looked left down the beach, back toward the town center. It looked like she’d be able to walk right into town along the beach. About half a mile away, she could see the big town wharf that sat behind the police station, the marina bristling with the masts of a few dozen sailboats and fishing boats. A few larger yachts were tied to moorings farther out in the harbor. A couple of other wooden piers poked out into the water with small boats tied up to them. Based on the collection of colorful umbrellas and picnic tables on a wide wooden deck on stilts in the sand near the water, Nina guessed it was a bar. To her left, her nearest neighbor was about a hundred feet away, a modern bungalow painted periwinkle blue with a hot tub on the deck. There was a Boston Whaler moored out front, but no sign that anyone was home. She guessed it was a vacation home. She turned and made her way back up the sandy path to the cottage, thinking she would unpack and maybe have a shower.

  Just as she stepped up onto the veranda, Nina heard a loud knock on her front door followed by “Yoo-hoo! Mailman!” Looking back through the tiny house, she could make out the silhouette of a man on the other side of the screen door and a red golf cart parked in the lane behind him. She walked the ten steps back through the house and opened the front door. A man in his midtwenties stood at the door, dressed in navy-blue Bermuda shorts and a crisp, white short-sleeve shirt with a pineapple crest on the breast pocket. He was deeply tanned, with shaggy dark-brown hair. A long lock of it fell over one eye. Around his wrists he wore a collection of colorful, but faded, woven friendship bracelets and leather laces strung with silver beads. He stuck out his hand, and Nina shook it.

  “Hiya,” he said. “Dave Jensen, Pineapple Cay Postal Service. Everyone calls me Danish. Hello, Nina Spark. I’ve got a letter for you.” He handed her a large cardboard envelope with a registered-mail sticker on it.

  “Thanks,” said Nina. “Nice to meet you.” She turned and started back toward the kitchen table, reading the return address as she walked. It was from Katherine, the features editor at a magazine she sometimes worked for. To her surprise, mailman Dave “Danish” Jensen followed her.

  “So, you’re the one who bought Miss Rose’s house,” he said.

  “I’m the one,” said Nina.

  “She was one sharp old doll,” he said. “Pretty free and easy with the love-life advice, too, especially for someone who was about a hundred and watched cooking shows and reruns of Columbo every night.”

  “She wasn’t always a hundred. I imagine she experienced a lot in life,” said Nina.

  “She used to come to the door every day when I delivered her mail,” said Danish the mailman. “Sometimes she’d be out in the yard picking flowers or something, and she’d always invite me in for a cookie or something and a free lecture. Nice old lady. I even miss her pep talks.”

  “Well, I hope your love life is sorted out now, because I’m not really qualified to dispense advice,” said Nina.

  Danish looked over her shoulder as she tried to tear open the envelope, which had been sealed with several layers of packing tape.

  “Do you need a knife to open that?” he asked.

  “Ah, yes. I guess I do, thanks,” she replied. He produced a Swiss Army Knife from his pocket and handed it to her. She opened the envelope and read.

  “So, what is it?” asked Danish the mailman.

  “It’s an invitation to a party at the home of Jules and Kiki Savage on Saturday night. Apparently to celebrate the donation of the Morning Glory emerald and other artifacts from a shipwreck to the Pineapple Cay Museum. I didn’t know Jules Savage lived here. Do you know anything about this? I guess I’m being sent to write a magazine piece about it.”

  When Nina had called Katherine to let her know she was available for work, Katherine had mentioned a possible job once she’d arrived on Pineapple Cay—but Nina had no idea it would be the day she arrived. Oh, well, you can’t eat sunshine and sand. A puff piece on a party at the home of rock legend Jules Savag
e isn’t exactly hard labor, she told herself.

  Suddenly, Danish was down on his knees in front of her, hands clasped beseechingly.

  “Can I be your plus one? Your escort? Please, please, please, please?” She took a step back.

  “Why are you so interested in a donation to the local museum?” she asked, suspicious. “Are you a big Jules Savage fan?”

  “No—I mean, yes, he’s a great guy, and I like his music, but no . . .” Danish hopped to his feet, turned away from her, and took a few steps toward the window, where he stood looking out at the water for a moment. Then he spun around to face her again. “I’m in love!” he said with feeling.

  Nina’s eyes widened.

  “It’s hard to be a virile man in his prime like myself on an island this small,” he continued.

  This can’t be for real, thought Nina. She took another step back behind the kitchen table. Her mind raced, thinking of how to buy some time until she could figure out if he was crazy but harmless, or call-the-cops crazy. She said the first thing that came into her head.

  “Let me see. Pineapple Cay has a population of about five thousand. That means roughly half of them are women—or men, whatever. So that means about twenty-five hundred women, and probably at least fifteen hundred over the age of twenty. Let’s say about a quarter of those are around your age, give or take a few years: three hundred and seventy-five eligible women. Have you run through them all already?”

  He continued with his speech as if she hadn’t said anything. “Then just three weeks ago, into the barren wasteland of my love life walks this goddess . . . Alice Rolle!” He savored the name in his mouth. “With a name like a delicious iced pastry and supersmart and beautiful. We were made for each other! But she won’t give me the time of day.” His shoulders sank. Nina tried to interject, but he kept talking.

  “She’ll be at that party on Saturday night. She’s the new curator of the museum. I need another chance to show her that I’m the guy. I’m done with weekend romances with the ladies of Pineapple Cay. I’m done with the predawn exits out the back doors of vacation rentals while Stephanie, Brittany, Amanda, or whomever slumbers on with a satisfied smile on her face while I trudge home alone.”

  Nina raised her eyebrows.

  “Alice is my destiny, and I’m hers!” He collapsed onto the chintz sofa, head in his hands. Tentatively, Nina sat down beside him.

  “Do you talk to her like that?” she asked. He ran his hands through his hair and raised his head to look at her, his hair now standing on end.

  “I know what the problem is,” he said. “Deputy Superintendent John ‘Blue’ Roker. The long arm of the law. I’ve seen him squiring her around town, taking her out to lunch at The Redoubt, showing her the sights, trying to be charming.”

  He stood and started pacing the room again as he spoke. “I mean, I can see why he’s homed in on her. She’s smart, sophisticated, and drop-dead gorgeous, with the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen. Everyone loves her. But what does she see in him? He spends all his free time in his backyard puttering around in his flower garden. Taking them out of pots, putting them into pots, making dirt soup for his plants, picking bugs off the leaves one by one by one! Does that sound like a fun date to you? Boring!”

  As a Mainer who had been living in Manhattan for the past ten years, Nina was actually pretty excited at the prospect of bringing the cottage flower garden back to its former glory. She might even put in a small kitchen garden for vegetables and herbs and hang some window boxes. She had gorged on home renovation and gardening magazines like Martha Stewart Living on the plane ride down, but she didn’t interrupt. Danish continued his rant.

  “I spent a lifetime over at Blue’s house one afternoon, hanging with him and Ted, watching Mr. Tough Guy the Chief of Police garden. At least there was beer. OK, Blue is good-looking, I guess, or so I’ve been told. But he’s so old! He must be about forty.”

  He glanced at Nina. “Sorry, no offense. Obviously, you’re pretty hot for an older woman. Under other circumstances, sparks might be flying here, Nina Spark. But as it is, I’m all Alice, all the time. What am I going to do?”

  Nina took a deep breath. She’d been on Pineapple Cay approximately one hour.

  “Listen, Danish. First things first. Thirty-six is only older when you’re twenty-five. For the rest of us, it’s just the beginning. Secondly, you know, that kind of intensity, all that destiny talk, can be a bit off-putting—not to mention a little scary—in the early stages of a relationship. Dial it back a little. Try kind, attentive, but . . . calmer.”

  Nina mulled over the implications of taking an overwrought, lovesick mailman she’d just met to a party at the island hideaway of a rock star she’d never met. Yesterday, in New York, she would have nixed the idea immediately, without a second thought. Today, on Pineapple Cay, with the future more or less a complete blank, anything was possible. She couldn’t see what harm it would do. Why not give young love a chance. Maybe they’d be better at it than she was.

  “OK, Danish, against my better judgment, yes, I guess you can come with me to the party, because I do need some help getting my bearings here. But please remember that I’ll be there representing a magazine. Don’t make me regret it. No shenanigans, OK?” she said, looking at him in what she hoped was a stern way.

  He raised his arms above his head in a victory salute.

  “Yes! Thank you. You won’t regret it. No shenanigans,” he said, making air quotes with his fingers as he backed out the door. “I promise. I’ve got to finish my route. Catch you later.”

  Then he was gone.

  Alone at last, Nina locked the front and back doors, peeled off the tight-fitting clothes she’d been wearing since she got dressed in the dark at five o’clock that morning, and hopped in the shower. The hot water felt exquisite on her skin. Afterward, wrapped in the bath towel she’d brought from home, Nina emptied her bag onto the bed and plucked out a pair of cut-off shorts, clean undies, and a light cotton peasant blouse in dusty rose. It felt wonderful to be clean and fresh smelling and not to be wearing a heavy winter coat. Making her way back into the kitchen, she cut a chunk of fresh bread and sliced some cheese, taking a few bites to quell the hunger pangs before returning to the bedroom.

  She made up the bed with the cotton sheets and the light feather duvet she’d brought. It was amazing what you could fit in a small bag if you knew how to pack. Nina had traveled a lot for her freelance gigs, and she had packing down to a science. The bedding, running shoes, and a wool sweater were the bulkiest items she’d brought. Rolled into tight balls, the shorts, T-shirts, blouses, bathing suit, socks, underwear, yoga pants, and flip-flops didn’t take up much room. She’d also brought a cozy plaid flannel shirt, two light cotton summer dresses, an olive-green jersey skirt, and one little black dress with a weightless black mohair shawl and a pair of strappy black sandals that would do for a more formal event, like the Savages’ dinner party. Rain pants and a waterproof jacket folded away to nothing in their own little pouches. Along with her laptop computer, a notebook, the magazines she’d picked up on the plane, and a couple of paperbacks, that was it. She’d filled the nooks and crannies of her bag with her toiletries, including the tiny bottles of shampoo and soaps she’d collected from hotels she’d stayed in on various trips.

  Nina stowed her clothes in the bureau, and her toiletries in the bathroom. In ten minutes, she was done moving in. It was four o’clock. She grabbed one of the books and mixed herself a goombay smash with the rum and juice Pansy had brought, plopping in a couple of ice cubes from the freezer. She headed out onto the veranda, where there was a white plastic chaise longue and two chairs. Nina settled herself onto the chaise longue and sighed contentedly. She opened the book, which she’d been reading in New York. It was the second in a six-volume memoir by a Norwegian writer whom all her friends had been talking about. A bleak tale of growing up and struggling to find meaning in life in a place where it always seemed to be dark and snowing. She’d been engr
ossed in it, curled up on her sofa in New York, nursing her own wounds through the dark winter months. She plucked out the bookmark and started reading. The hero declared his love for a beautiful woman poet. She rejected him, saying she preferred his friend. He went to his room, stared into his bathroom mirror, and proceeded to cut his face open with a broken bottle.

  “OK,” said Nina, slamming the book shut. Out in the distance, the fisherman was still casting, his long line making a graceful arc through the still air. She watched the slow, regular rhythm of his movements. In a couple of minutes, she was asleep.

  She awoke with the sensation that she was not alone. A shadow was blocking out the sun. Nina sat up quickly. The dark silhouette of a man with his hands on his hips loomed over her. She squinted up at him, trying to make out his features.

  “Hello, Miss Spark. I hope I didn’t wake you. There was no answer to my knock on the front door, so I thought I’d check around back. Welcome to Pineapple Cay.”

  It was Barry Bassett, the angry man from the airport. He held out a fruit basket wrapped in cellophane. Nina scrambled to her feet and put a more comfortable distance between them. Then she reached out to accept the heavy basket, which she clutched in front of her. There was a pineapple and a bunch of bananas and some mangoes. All the weighty fruits. She glanced up and down the empty beach and out at the water. The fisherman way out on the flats stood motionless with his fly rod in his hand, his sun-glassed eyes looking in their direction.

  “I think this is the first time I’ve been ambushed by the welcome wagon, but thank you,” said Nina.

  “Ha, ha, ha. You are most welcome. I’m glad to find you in. There’s a matter I’d like to discuss with you. May I sit down?” Without waiting for an answer, he lowered himself into one of the chairs, sat back, and crossed his legs. Nina stayed where she was but put the basket down.

  “Well,” said Barry, “I believe you were with Ms. Gallagher when we had our little contretemps earlier today. I want you to know that I’m aware you had no knowledge of any prior discussions I have had with Ms. Gallagher related to Sundrift Cottage. You have innocently become embroiled in a situation of her creation.” He paused to check Nina’s reaction to his words. She said nothing, and after a moment, he continued.