Chapter 11
By morning the storm had calmed. In the gray and murky stillness of the air they felt the tension of the new day. Conner was still insistent that Mona sign over her part of the island to him. When she refused, he stalked to the door to leave.
"You'll regret this!" he shouted as he started out the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" demanded Owen, grabbing him by the arm.
"Get your hands off me," snarled the man. "I don't have to tell you nothin'!"
"If your men are firing on us, they'll have to fire on you as well!" Owen told him.
"That's what you think, buddy!" rasped the man, trying to shake him off.
"I'm with you, man," said Yves, coming to help Owen subdue the older man. "So long as he's here they won't dare fire."
"That's what you think!" growled Conner. "You'll find out! Soon as it's clear enough for my men to see, they'll fire according to their orders, with or without me."
"We'll find out, all right," Yves agreed as he and Owen wrestled the husky little man into a chair. "And you'll see how well your men can obey orders."
"Oh, Yves!" protested Deanna. "You're not going to let them shoot us, are you?"
"Who, me, doll? Not on your life! I've got nothing to do with it."
"But. if Mona thigns the paper, we're thafe.
Right? Make her thign and there won't be anything to worry about."
"Just sit down and relax," Owen commanded. "Things'll be all right if you don't get too excited. Conner doesn't want to be killed any more than we do."
"Ohh! What do you know!" cried the girl in exasperation. "Mona, listen to reason, will you?"
"You listen for once, Deanna," Mona returned. "This time / make the decisions and everyone plays my way. You've gotten me into enough trouble. Let me make my own for a change."
"But we were only trying to help you!" protested the brunette. "Can't you see that? If Yves had taken this place you never would have had this trouble."
"Just shut up!" shouted Mona. "I'm sick and tired of everyone wanting this place, trying to hurt, threaten, kill, and rape me. And you haven't been the least of the offenders, Deanna. You head the list of those who've tried to take advantage of me."
"Yves!" pleaded Deanna.
"Don't look at me, honey. She's got a more level head than you ever did." "What?"
"You got to admit, love, your big advantage in life is your body, and only your body."
"Oooohhhh!" whimpered the girl as she ran off into the library.
"What're ya gonna do with me?" demanded Conner.
"Who knows?" said Yves with a shrug of his shoulders casting a questioning look at Owen. "Got any rope out in the kitchen or any place? Maybe he'd like to be tied up like a real prisoner."
"It shouldn't be necessary so long as someone has a gun," replied Owen. "Did Moll leave one here, Mona?"
"No need to bother in that line," interrupted Yves, pulling a gun from a shoulder holster beneath his coat. "I always come prepared and I'm sure if we check this gentleman we'll find a similar weapon."
"Why, you smart punk!" accused Conner.
"Sit still!" ordered Yves as the two men searched him and found a small, blunt-nosed pistol. "Now just rest easy until your men decide it's that time."
"Are you worried?" asked Mona. "Think they'll shoot you, too?"
"You sure ain't like your uncle!" retorted the older man. "He was a hell of a lot more likable."
"If he was like you, I'm sure he was!" mocked Owen. "You know anything about the old lady that was here, Moll Whipple?"
"Moll Flanders I heard of. Moll Whipple must be one o' you guys. With a New England tag like that one she'd never make it in history books."
"I have a feeling he doesn't know where Moll is," Owen said to Mona, "but I think I ought to go look for her just in case, don't you? With all this trouble, there's no telling what'll happen."
Mona nodded and watched him go out into the gray-misted morning. Soon it would be clear enough for the men out there to see the house, even if the mist hadn't cleared to shore. The men could shoot and be gone before anyone could do anything about it. She shivered at the thought of it all ending with one burst of fire, while she had been fearing ghosts, rapists, and mysterious attackers since coming to this place.
"Yves, I don't want to die!" simpered Deanna, returning as Owen shut the front door. "Let Conner go and we'll be safe."
"Don't be dumb, Deanna," he argued. "This guy knows they won't shoot with him in here."
"Who you believin', honey? That idiot frog or me? / know my men. He doesn't!"
"Mona, how about fixing some breakfast," said Yves. "I'm starved. Can you cook? I know Deanna can't."
"Okay," responded Mona, glad to leave for the peace of the kitchen. "Bacon and eggs?"
"Sunny-side up," he called to her departing figure.
While she cooked, Mona kept looking hopefully out the window to watch the weather. It was wet and dark outside, quiet like a tomb It seemed the world lay in silence, as if in a vacuum, awaiting a holocaust. She shuddered at the thought.
Breakfast was almost ready when Yves arrived in the kitchen to check on the spicy odor of the local hickory-smoked bacon and crackling spatter of frying eggs.
"Wow! This female can cook!" he exclaimed, embracing her shoulders as she bent over the stove. "Domestic if not amorous. Well, can't have everything, can we?"
Ramona continued cooking, not at all amused by his insinuation.
"How soon do we eat?" he demanded, looking at the table by the hearth fire on the inside wall of the kitchen. "Ah, you have the table set. Mind if I sit and wait? Maybe I can get a cup of coffee."
He sniffed loudly and murmured ecstatically, "I believe that's the real stuff!"
Mona looked at the gurgling coffee pot on the back of the stove. It was emitting that pungent, aromatic scent of perked coffee that wasn't available when one bought a cup of drip coffee at the corner restaurant.
"You look like one of those old Maxwell House ads on television," Yves continued as he settled himself in a wicker chair by the table. "Mama busy at the oven, with a bubbling percolator on the back burner. Is it really good to the last drop?"
The only way to quiet this effervescent idiot, she thought, is to give him something to keep his mouth busy. She poured him a big mug of steaming coffee.
"Great!" he exclaimed. "Knew I'd get to you sooner or later."
"Mostly later," she taunted him. "Aren't you supposed to be guarding Conner?"
"Left him with Deanna. Don't worry. I think she's got the message. But just in case, I took the gun. Don't take any chances with hysterical broads."
"With Deanna, I wouldn't," said Mona, returning to the stove. "She only understands one thing. I'm glad you didn't leave her the gun. But what's she supposed to do if he tried to break away? Scream?"
"Don't worry, doll. I've thought of everything.'
"I'm sure."
"Hope you weren't very fond of those red curtains in the living room," he said. "As a matter of fact . . ."
"The cords that tie them back to the sides of the window made really good rope to tie the guy up with," Yves continued, slurping his coffee.
"Glad they're good for something. I was wondering how to change those curtains so the room would look half decent."
"How about my eggs, doll?" he implored, moving to embrace her.
"You'll get them a lot faster without pawing."
"Who's pawing, babe? You just don't know how to live!"
"Spare me," she answered, carrying the frying pan to the table to put his breakfast on his plate.
In the living room, Conner was doing some fast talking to the fluttering little brunette who sat wrenching her hands, wishing Yves would return.
"You really oughta listen to me, girl," Conner told her.
"It's not me!" she protested. "It's Mona who's so stubborn! She'll never give in. We'll all get killed!"
"Not if you don't want to, doll," insisted the man. "Come with me and only the idiots here will get done in. Besides, I can offer you much more than that two-bit night club man in the kitchen."
"He's my friend," Deanna retorted defensively. "What can you give me that he doesn't?"
"You wouldn't have to work in no night spot for me, kid. Just keep your pretty body in a nice apartment on Park Avenue for me and you'll get the same clothes and goodies that the ladies on the Ten Best Dressed List get. Unnerstand? You'll be living like Jackie Onassis, Grace Kelly, and all those others, with hardly no effort but to keep ol' daddy here happy. Can you do that?"
"You know I can!"
"Well, you gonna' sit there all day waitin' for H-hour? You wanna blow up with these cats?"
"N-no!" she stammered nervously, getting up unsteadily.
"Then do something before my guys get itchy!"
"They wouldn't shoot you, would they?" she asked, reluctant to move against Yves' wishes.
"You gonna take the chance?" he demanded, eyeing her lovely petite body with desire. "Hate to see those nice tits and pretty pussy o' yours get wasted so young."
"Oh, please don't let them kill us. I don't want to die!"
"Let me go 'n' I will," he replied.
The young woman disappeared into the library and returned with a letter opener to cut the cords. When he was free, they stood looking at each other.
"You mean that about Park Avenue, mister?"
"You wanna try me?"
"Please take me with you. I hate this place, and I don't want to die with them just because Mona's stupid enough not to give you this horrid old island."
Conner nodded and took her by the arm.
"Come on, babe. We're goin' for a cruise," he told her, leading her out the door.
Two minutes later Yves and Mona were startled by a volley of gunfire.
"My God! They're shooting at us!" she cried.
"Those aren't the cruiser guns!" called Yves as he raced to the front of the house. "Mona! They're gone! Conner and Deanna are gone!"
Ramona ran after him, colliding with him as he stopped short on the threshold of the open front door.
"Careful!" he yelled back at her above the sound of gunfire. "Get back till it's over."
In the dark mist outside they could see the red-white flashes of gunfire preceding the echoing shots. When it was over they could hear Deanna weeping.
"Please, please don't kill me! I'm not Mona. Honest to God, I'm not Mona!"
She crouched near the fallen Conner, shuddering and sobbing loudly.
An older man and Owen came out of the mist, followed by two men in gray business suits. One of the men bent over Conner, checking his bloody shoulder and listening to his heart.
"He'll be all right," he called to the man behind him. "Call for a Coast Guard cutter and ambulance."
"Owen!" cried Mona. "What about the armed boats?"
"Coast Guard's already on the way and probably have them in their sights by now. I called them as soon as I got away from the house."
"You did?" Mona queried. "But what about Mrs. Whipple?"
"She's already on her way home. She's pretty fed up with the whole thing."
"Home? But where was she?"
"With me," interrupted the older man with Owen.
Where had she heard his voice before? In the darkness, she couldn't be sure. He was wearing oilskins so she couldn't tell much about his shape. He was obviously tall, with a bony, gaunt face but that was all that was visible in the eerie light of the eye of the storm.
He rustled in his leather garb, sending chills through Ramona.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Rolf Hecht," he told her with a smile.
Rolf Hecht, returned from the grave?
"You can't be! They said you were dead!" she cried.
"That's so," he answered in a rasping voice, placing a cold clammy hand on her face.
Her mind reeled. Why is he so cold and wet? They told me he was dead. Dead! Is he? Oh, God, what is this?
She fainted.