“No,” R.J. said, “we don’t know that at all.” He gave Sara a look of warning that she wasn’t to get too comfortable and she wasn’t to trust too much. This young man may seem nice, but he was the son of the dead man.
“The island was alerted that something big might be happening,” Gideon said. “The office of billionaire Charles Dunkirk called a realtor in Arundel, and soon after that we heard that the illustrious R. J. Brompton was checking out every website about the island.”
When Sara looked at R.J., he raised an eyebrow. She knew what he was thinking: good detective work.
“Someone from the island called your office in New York,” Gideon continued, “and asked when the meeting on King’s Isle was. He gave the wrong date. ‘The eighteenth, right?’ Something like that. Your secretary said that Mr. Brompton wouldn’t be on King’s Isle until the twenty-second, so we knew when you were arriving.”
“And your plan was to put us in jail?” Sara asked, eyes wide.
“Not my plan,” Gideon said. “I had nothing to do with it. I have nothing to do with any of them, but that doesn’t keep me from knowing what’s going on.”
R.J. was heating a skillet full of oil, about to put the fish in. “Why would they want to make me hate this place? If they went to all that trouble to find out I was coming, they must have known I was thinking of buying land here. Or is it that they like this place just as it is and don’t want to sell?”
“They very much want to sell. We’re a dying society. The fishing is bad and all we have is a hope of tourism. But people never return to King’s Isle,” Gideon said. “There’s nothing here. There’re no beaches, no hot springs. The idea was to force you to stay here for a few days so you could look around and really get to know the place. They thought that if you spent time here, you’d come to like it.”
“They scared us half to death,” Sara said. “That man Lassiter—”
“He’s a real sleaze, isn’t he?” Gideon said. “Fenny’s best friend. The island wasn’t expecting four of you and that threw them off a bit. They were told it was just going to be the fabulously wealthy R. J. Brompton and his secretary. The truth is that the majority of the population had no idea what was going on. We were told to go spend two hours on the west side of the island and anybody who didn’t would be fined a thousand dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Sara said.
“The day before you arrived, the underground telephone cable was cut.”
“Did you go to the west side of the island?” R.J. asked.
“I never do anything anybody tells me to do,” Gideon said and for the first time the humor was gone from his voice. “Tell me, Mr. Brompton, what were you going to do about King’s Isle?”
“Tell Charley Dunkirk not to buy anything here.”
Sara looked at him in astonishment. “You’d already made up your mind before …?”
“Before we were arrested on a made-up charge? Yeah. I didn’t like the place the second we got off the ferry.”
“Right,” Gideon said. “There are too many people here, too many houses involved. It’s easier to start from scratch.”
“Smart kid,” R.J. said. “You want to work for me?”
His remark was meant as a joke, but Gideon didn’t take it as such. “Yes,” he said seriously. “Anywhere, anytime. As you said, I’ll do anything to get off this island.”
R.J. slid six perfectly fried fish onto a platter. “Why don’t you just leave? You look big enough.”
“I’m underage and Nezbit would come after me.”
“Nezbit? Your father?”
“I have no proof of it, but I’m sure he’s not my biological father, and the law says he is so I have to stay. Besides …”
“The twins,” Sara said softly. “Whose are they?”
“I don’t know. The old man brought them home one day like he’d found puppies.”
“Didn’t Social Services—?”
“Here? Nobody on King’s Isle will go up against the Unholy Trio.”
“Nezbit, Lassiter, and the judge,” R.J. said.
“Right on.”