The High Tide Club Read online

Page 3


  She gestured for Brooke to follow her down a wide hallway. They passed arched entryways into what looked like twin parlors, furnished with overstuffed sofas and chairs and heavily carved tables and chests.

  Louette paused outside a closed door at the end of the hall. “This used to be the library, but she can’t make the stairs no more, so me and Shug fixed her up a bedroom in here. She don’t hear so good, so you got to speak up when you talk, and she’s been pretty sick lately, so you need to make sure she don’t tire herself out. But don’t go thinking because she’s nearly a hundred years old she’s weak-minded or something. No, ma’am! Not Miss Josephine. She don’t miss a trick.”

  She rapped loudly on the door, waited a moment, then poked her head inside. “Miss Josephine? You ready to see your company?”

  “Is that the lawyer I sent for? Bring her in, Louette.”

  * * *

  The library at Shellhaven had been a grand room once. But now the dark mahogany paneling was dull, the draperies at the windows faded and tattered. Three walls of the room were lined with bookshelves, crammed with books and rows and rows of the distinctive bright yellow spines of National Geographic magazines. Every flat surface was littered with items; birds’ nests, sun-bleached seashells, chunks of coral, even a huge set of yellowed shark jaws. A stuffed bobcat sat on a pedestal near the window, muzzle open in mid-snarl, his molting yellow fur drifting onto the dark pine floor. A five-foot-long intact skeleton of an alligator stretched across the top of one of the built-in bookcases, and tall apothecary bottles were filled with sharks’ teeth, sea glass, and what appeared to be tiny bird skulls.

  A hospital bed had been set up in the far corner of the room, partially hidden by an ornate three-panel chinoiserie screen.

  A box fan whirred in one of the two open windows, doing little to dispel the heat or the scent of antiseptic soap.

  The lady of the house was ensconced in a brown vinyl recliner. Brooke had been expecting a slightly diminished version of the defiant mink-wrapped, shotgun-toting heiress she’d seen in Southern Living, but the passing of years had been as cruel to Josephine Warrick as it had been to her home.

  The flowing white mane was gone, replaced by a navy-blue baseball cap that did little to conceal the nearly bald head beneath it. Pale skin blotched with vivid brown liver spots stretched over skeletal cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her lips were thin and bloodless. But a pair of bushy white eyebrows arched over large, dark eyes behind oversized yellow-tinted glasses that carefully studied Brooke as though she were another museum specimen.

  In the quick research she’d done, Brooke had seen dozens of photos of Josephine Warrick. She’d been a striking—if not beautiful—woman, a slender, serious-faced debutante with the short, wavy hair of the period, then a dewy-faced bride in the fifties, turned into a rangy, imposing force to be reckoned with in later years. The society pages of the newspapers in Savannah, Atlanta, and Palm Beach showed her dressed in golf togs, tennis wear, and expensive designer gowns, as well as hunting gear, standing with one foot atop a massive buck.

  The woman sitting in the cracked vinyl recliner weighed less than ninety pounds and was wrapped in layers of knitted afghans and throws. An oxygen tank stood beside the chair, and a pair of thin plastic cannulas snaked toward the transparent breathing apparatus on her face.

  “Hello, Mrs. Warrick,” Brooke said, after the momentary shock of the old lady’s appearance had worn off. “I’m Brooke Trappnell.” She took a step toward the chair, then stopped abruptly.

  “Grrrrrr.”

  She hadn’t noticed the dogs, they were so small, and nearly the same beige as the afghan.

  “Grrrr.”

  A pair of miniature Chihuahuas sprang into defense mode; the fur on their necks bristling, teeth bared.

  “Hush, Teeny. Hush, Tiny.” The old woman stroked their backs, patted their heads. “Don’t mind the girls,” she told Brooke. “They won’t bite. Unless I tell them to. Sit down over here,” she said, pointing to a faded chintz wing chair. “And you needn’t call me Mrs. Warrick. Josephine will do just fine, and I’ll call you Brooke, if I may. The doctors keep saying I’m going deaf, but I’m not really. It’s just that people these days mumble and fail to enunciate properly.” She gave Brooke a sharp look. “You’re not one of those types, are you? I can’t abide a mumbler.”

  Brooke sat down in the chair and balanced her briefcase across her lap. “No, ma’am,” she said loudly. “I’ve got a lot of faults, but that’s not one of them.”

  “You didn’t tell anybody why you were coming over here today, did you?”

  “No, because you never actually explained why you wanted to see me.”

  The old lady chuckled. “But you were curious about me and this island, so you decided to come anyway. Is that correct?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then we’d better get to it, hadn’t we? As you can tell by my wretched appearance, I don’t have a lot of time these days for social niceties.”

  “Your housekeeper mentioned you’d been ill. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Louette likes to fuss. I smoked too much and for too long, and I’ve had COPD for several years, but it’s lung cancer now, and that’s a different matter. I did the radiation, but I draw the line at chemo. So that’s that. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know anything about this island, Brooke?”

  “I did some reading after your call, and I was here briefly as a child, on a campout.”

  “On the other end of the island, which my wretched cousins’ heirs sold to the State of Georgia in 1978 for pennies on the dollar,” Josephine said. She shook her head. “If they’d offered me the same deal, I would have bought it myself.”

  “Why didn’t they?”

  “Bad blood. We’d had boundary disputes over the years, silly feuds over water rights, that type of thing.” She shrugged. “Also, from what I heard, they needed the money. As you may know, my father, Samuel Bettendorf, along with two cousins, bought Talisa in 1912.”

  She nodded toward the bookshelves. “Somewhere I have a copy of the original bill of sale. They each chipped in $10,000, which doesn’t sound like a lot of money now, but back then, it was the equivalent of $2.4 million apiece. My mother hated the cold Boston winters, so Father bought the island and eventually built this house. His cousins’ wives had no interest in spending time in a place as wild and remote as this, so they eventually partitioned the land, with my father retaining this end of the island. His cousins had more acreage, which was all they were interested in, but Father bought most of their holdings and kept what really mattered—this tract, which has ocean frontage, high ground, and the only freshwater source on the island.”

  “Clever man,” Brooke said.

  “He was brilliant, really,” Josephine said. “He made his money in the family shipping business, but Father was interested in everything—natural science, the law, literature, the arts. He was the one who insisted I go to college, which was not the norm for girls at that time.”

  She sighed. “He loved it here. He loved the climate, the wildlife, the peacefulness. That’s why I have to preserve his legacy here.” She gestured around the room. “Saving Talisa, studying it, understanding its beauty was his life’s work. And then after I married Preiss, it was our work.”

  Josephine’s voice grew raspy. “Which is why I’ve fought so hard all these years to keep the state from taking my land.”

  Brooke opened her briefcase and took out a yellow legal pad and pen. “I didn’t have time to do much research, but I do know from what I’ve read that your Atlanta lawyers have been fending off the state’s offers.”

  “The state built the campsite you stayed at, they paved roads, and then they cut down some of the oldest trees on the island to build another campground, cabins, and a ten-thousand–square-foot ‘conference center.’ Can you tell me why Talisa needs a conference center?”

&nb
sp; “Maybe as meeting space?” Brooke guessed.

  “That ferry of theirs runs four times a day,” Josephine rasped. “Hundreds of people tromping around, leaving their fast-food wrappers and beer cans and dirty diapers. It’s deplorable. They’re deplorable!”

  “How do things stand with the state currently?” Brooke asked.

  “Their last offer, made five years ago, was for the same amount they paid my cousins nearly forty years ago,” Josephine said bitterly. “It’s an insult. When I refused, the state filed notice that they’ll take my land by condemnation. For the public good.” Her lips twisted in disgust. “The public hasn’t got any right to traipse across this land. I won’t let them.”

  “What is it you think I can do to prevent that?” Brooke asked. “You already have the best law firm in Atlanta representing you.”

  “I want you,” Josephine said.

  “But why? You don’t even know me.”

  “I’ve been following your career in the newspapers. You’ve got spunk. And I need somebody with spunk. Besides, you sued the National Park Service, didn’t you?”

  “And lost,” Brooke said calmly.

  “But you fought them tooth and nail for three years. You wore the bastards down.”

  “Not really. You of all people know what that’s like. The Park Service decided that Loblolly, my family’s house on Cumberland Island, was ‘nonconforming,’ so they knocked it down. And we’re not allowed to build anything to replace it.”

  “Which is precisely why I need you to fight my last battle,” Josephine said. “I won’t be around that much longer. I’ve seen their secret preliminary master plan. The first thing the state will do is to tear this house down. And I can’t have that. I can’t die knowing they’ll ruin everything. All our years of work.”

  “Tear down Shellhaven? Why would the state do that?”

  “You’ve seen the condition it’s in. It would take millions to preserve it. Much cheaper for them to knock it down and build more cabins and conference centers. They’d build a big marina where my dock is—we’ve got the only deepwater boat access on this end of the island.”

  Brooke looked down at the few lines of notes she’d taken. “Josephine, I just don’t think I can help you. It’s true I’m a lawyer, but this is not my area of expertise at all.”

  “Word is out that I’m sick,” Josephine said, ignoring her. “They’ve already come over here, sniffing around. C. D. ran off a boatload of ’em a couple of weeks ago. Survey crew, they said they were. They’d tied up at our dock, just as C. D. was coming back from the mainland with a load of groceries. He fired a couple of warning shots across the bow of their boat, and they took off like a pack of scalded dogs, but they’ll be back.”

  Brooke shook her head in alarm. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “They were trespassing. As long as I’m alive, this is still private property. They’ve got no business sniffing around over here. I want this thing settled before I get too sick to fight anymore.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” Brooke asked.

  “I want my land and this house protected, put in a trust or something, so that nobody, and I mean nobody, can develop this end of the island or tear down this house.”

  “Who’d be the beneficiary of such a trust?” Brooke asked. “Do you have family?”

  The old lady put her head back and closed her eyes. “Not really. My brother, Gardiner, was killed in World War Two. Preiss and I never had children.” She smiled, briefly. “Never wanted any, either. I didn’t marry until I was in my thirties. He was six years younger than me. Bet you didn’t know that. No, there’s somebody else. My friends. My oldest, dearest friends. The High Tide Club girls.”

  4

  Josephine

  April 1932

  It was Ruth’s idea to “borrow” my papa’s Packard to go exploring on the island. At thirteen, she was the oldest, and the bossiest. I was still twelve, and Millie, whose birthday wasn’t until the last week of August, was the baby of the group. That was the night the High Tide Club was born.

  We were on spring break from boarding school, having taken the train down from Boston a good five days before the rest of the family would join us.

  With the run of the house mostly to ourselves and largely unsupervised, we’d spent the week listening to the radio, playing endless hands of canasta, and taking turns reading aloud from the naughty parts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which we’d found hidden in my mother’s lingerie drawer.

  It was the night before my parents and Gardiner were to arrive.

  “I’m bored. Let’s go for a drive.” Ruth jumped up and ran down the stairs with Millie and me trailing along behind. We followed her out to the barn, which had once held racehorses but now housed Papa’s “island cars”—a disreputable-looking collection of automobiles that had outlived their useful lives back at home in Boston but were still well suited for life on Talisa.

  Ruth jumped into the front seat of the Packard. Once, when it had been Mama’s favorite car for shopping jaunts, it had been shiny and black with gleaming chrome trim and soft leather upholstery. But now the windshield was missing, along with the bumpers. The leather was cracked, and the chrome was pitted from exposure to the salt air.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I stood in front of the Packard’s blazing headlamps, my hands on my hips. Somehow, Ruth had managed to start the motor. And now, she blasted the car’s horn so loudly Millie and I both jumped, and a chicken, who’d been roosting up in the rafters of the barn, squawked and flapped down onto the sawdust-covered floor.

  “Let’s go!” Ruth said, tapping on the horn again.

  “But … but…,” Millie sputtered. “You can’t drive. You’re not old enough.”

  “I’m plenty old enough,” Ruth retorted. “I’ve been driving for ages and ages. My sister, Rose, taught me how.”

  That was good enough for me. I opened the door and swung onto the front seat.

  Millie stared at the two of us, trying to make us be sensible. “What if somebody finds out? We could get in a lot of trouble.”

  Ruth was rummaging around in the glove box, but she looked up, annoyed. “Pfffft. Who’s going to tell on us? We have the whole island all to ourselves.”

  “That’s not true,” Millie said stubbornly. “Mrs. Dorris is here, and the rest of the servants, and the colored people who run the commissary, and the man who brought us over on the boat…”

  “Mrs. Dorris goes to bed at seven o’clock, and the rest of the servants had better mind their own business or I’ll tell Papa to fire them,” I said, which I never would have done, and Papa wouldn’t have fired anybody on my say-so anyway, but Millie didn’t know that.

  “Lookie here!” Ruth cried. She was holding up a clear pint bottle with a brownish liquid. “Hooch!”

  “Ruth Mattingly, don’t you dare,” Millie said.

  So of course, Ruth uncapped the bottle, sniffed, and took a chug. She coughed and gagged, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and handed the bottle to me. I pretended to drink, then tucked it under the seat for safekeeping.

  “Are you coming or not?” Ruth asked. “Scaredy-cat!”

  Millie barely had one foot in the Packard before Ruth jammed the car into reverse, stomped on the gas, and shot us backward out of the barn.

  “Slow down!” Millie pleaded as the Packard lurched forward over the narrow asphalt road the islanders called Dixie Highway. But Ruth just laughed and sped up, and soon the wind was whipping our hair, and the headlamps shone yellow white in the inky darkness.

  “Where shall we go?” Ruth turned to me for directions. It was only her second time on Talisa, but I’d been coming to the island my whole life.

  That’s when I had the brilliant idea. I pointed ahead, toward a huge three-trunked live oak tree that marked a split in the road. “Take a left, just up there. We’ll go down to Mermaid Beach.”

  Without slowing down, Ruth veered so sharply l
eft we almost left the road, and as it was, a low-hanging limb from the tree scraped the Packard’s roof and right side, in the process depositing a long, lacy strand of spanish moss in Millie’s lap.

  “Hey!” I protested. “You almost put us in a ditch.”

  But Ruth just cackled with that demonic laugh of hers.

  Millie planted both hands on the dashboard to brace herself. “Look! There’s something up ahead, in the road.”

  Ruth slammed on the brakes, and the three of us watched as a five-foot-long alligator, its eyes glowing yellow orange, ran across the road.

  Millie’s screech echoed in the thick night air, but Ruth soon resumed driving.

  The asphalt gave out without warning, and then we were in the wildest part of our wild island. The road was a narrow, haphazard trail of crushed shells, and wax myrtles, palmettos, and oak trees crowded against the side of the Packard, the palm fronds slashing at the sides of the car.

  “Where are we?” Millie asked. She clutched my hand, and I clutched hers back, trying to act braver than I felt, partly because I had never been to Mermaid Beach at night but mostly because my thirteen-year-old best friend was driving my papa’s Packard, at night, in the dark.

  “It’s not far now,” I said, pointing toward the place a hundred yards ahead where the road seemed to disappear in a green curtain of underbrush.

  * * *

  “Stop here,” I told Ruth. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”

  But she didn’t stop until the Packard was ensnared in a tangle of wisteria and morning glory vines.

  Leaves and twigs rained down on our heads as we gingerly stepped out of the car.

  “I don’t like this,” Millie said, gripping the door handle. “I’m staying right here.”

  “Okay. Fine by me.” Ruth set out ahead of us, stabbing at the underbrush with a thick branch she’d picked up. “Go away, snakes!”

  “Come on,” I urged Millie, grabbing her hand. “It’s not that much farther.”