Carolina Isle (Edenton 2)

“So you’ll call them?” Ariel asked as she was applying a heated curling iron to Phyllis’s overpermed, overdyed hair.

“No telephones,” Phyllis said, holding up a hand mirror and examining the makeup Ariel had applied. “Cable cut, remember?”

“I forgot for a moment. But you do have a way to get information around town, don’t you?”

“You’re trying to get me to tell you things, aren’t you?”

“I’m trying to earn enough money to feed David and me,” Ariel said, her lips clenched. “He won’t say so, but he’s scared out of his mind, and I have to do something. I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be to turn him over to his mother as soon as we get back to Arundel. That woman pampers him to no end. She never lets him do anything at all.” Forgive me, she thought, making a silent apology to David. If there was any person who wasn’t pampered, it was David. All her life, Ariel had seen David doing things for his mother that only grown-ups did. He paid the household bills and she’d often seen him in the bank talking to the manager about his mother’s great masses of money.

“Did you hear me?” Phyllis asked.

“No, sorry. I was lost in thought. There, that looks good.” She had taken about four inches of height from Phyllis’s hair.

“You don’t think this makes me look older?”

Ariel almost said, You are older, but she didn’t. “I think it makes you look more intelligent. Looking like this will attract a better class of man than you would have before.” It was an honest statement and Phyllis heard it that way.

“So can you set it up?” Ariel asked, trying not to sound desperate. “I really do need to try to earn some money for David and me.”

“What about R.J. and that girl? What was her name?”

“Sara. They went off somewhere else.”

Phyllis turned quickly to look at Ariel. “They’d better not leave the island!”

“How can they?” Ariel asked calmly, but her heart was beating fast. What if R.J. and Sara found a way off the island? “What would happen to them if they did leave?”

“Nothing good,” Phyllis said, turning back and seeming to decide that she’d said too much. “I can help you get information out. The kids around town can take messages.”

“Can they put a flyer in the mailboxes? I mean, if I can persuade the shops in town to participate, that is.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Business around here is so bad that most people will do anything to make a buck.”

“They should find treasure like Mr. Nezbit did,” Ariel said, then waited to see what Phyllis would say.

“Fenny’s gold,” Phyllis said, smiling into the mirror. “It’s what everybody here talks about after they’ve had a couple of beers.”

“But no one’s found it?”

“Not even close. Except …”

“Except what?”

“I think Gideon knows more than he’s telling. Even I couldn’t get it out of him.”

“And you’ve tried?”

Phyllis laughed. “Honey, that boy and I have rocked that old bed of mine so many times…. Let’s just say that he keeps what he knows to himself.”

“Who is Gideon?”

“Fenny’s son. Or maybe he is. Gideon says he isn’t. But Fenny and Eula say he is. I never saw her pregnant, but she said she didn’t show all that much and she had a home birth.” This made Phyllis laugh hard, but Ariel couldn’t tell what the joke was.

“So David can use your computer, print out flyers, and someone will deliver them around town?”

“Sure,” Phyllis said, patting her hair.

“But won’t they get angry?”