“Babe, I’m sure you’ll figure out something. I hate to add to your concerns, but remember the boxes I put in the garage yesterday? When I came by today, they’d been moved to your front hall.” I told him to leave them where they were, and after we clicked off, I called my sons. Peter was at work and didn’t know anything about the boxes. I got Samuel’s voice mail and left a message. When I clicked off, Mason was holding out another perfectly executed s’more. I felt another wave of guilt, but took the oozing graham crackers anyway. I saw Commander’s point; the s’mores were absolutely delicious.
Some more of our group showed up with bags of supplies, and suddenly I was back to being the holder of the rhinestone clipboard. Mason and I traded looks. He got it-fun time was over. We left the fire circle and he announced he was going back to his room to practice his tai chi routine. “You’re welcome to come. I’ll throw in a private lesson.” His tone was genuine, no smarmy innuendo. I gave him a nice thank you, but no thank you. Besides, I needed to figure out what I was going to do about Adele and Izabella.
Mason disappeared in the fog and I went to the gift shop, hoping to snag a red-eye. The coffee wagon person was a no-show along with the rest of the staff, but the desk clerk let me make my own. While I was sipping the strong brew, I went to check out the social hall. Dinah grabbed me. “Stay here,” she commanded.
Dinah was my best friend and she had always come through for me, so if she needed me to stay somewhere, I did it without question. A lot of the bags were gone from the table. I noticed Commander Blaine wasn’t there, nor was Miss Lavender Pants. Just as I was going to ask what had happened to them, Commander Blaine came through the door in a burst of enthusiasm.
“I got my jacket, so now we can go,” he said, stopping next to Dinah.
“Good,” Dinah said with a pasted-on smile. “Won’t it be nice to take a walk and look for driftwood to use for Commander’s workshop?” she added, grabbing my arm.
It was clear that Commander Blaine didn’t share Dinah’s enthusiasm at my joining them, but he quickly picked up that Dinah wasn’t going to go without me and said something about it being good that there would be another set of arms to carry driftwood. No one brought up the folly of looking for anything in all that fog.
The three of us started along the boardwalk that led through the dunes on the edge of the grounds. The area on either side was strictly off-limits, as it was in the process of being replanted with fragile native plants. Not that we could see it anyway. Nor could we see much ahead or behind us, but the sound of the waves was clear.
At the end of the walkway, we passed through a small gateway that had an Asilomar sign. There was a little bit of sandy sidewalk, and then I recognized the blacktop of the street. When I tried looking both ways, I realized it was useless. I couldn’t possibly have seen a car, nor its driver, me, until it was too late. For the first time I really understood why the roads had been shut down and how isolated we were.
Even though there was supposed to be no traffic, habit made me hurry across the street. On the other side, low fencing protected the replanted area. A walkway was formed between the fenced areas and led to the open beach. The sand felt silky soft underfoot and immediately got into my shoes.
I thought the whole looking-for-driftwood thing was a line Commander had used to try to spend some time alone with Dinah, but as soon as we got onto the beach, he handed us each a reusable grocery bag and told us to start looking.
He went on a little ahead and stopped to pick up something, then dropped it quickly. I saw a dark hunk hit the sand.
“Be careful, somebody had a campfire here and it’s still smoldering.” He bent down again, then straightened, holding something. “Well, that’s not very considerate.” We’d caught up with him by then, and the sand was damp and easier to walk on. Ahead there seemed to be some kind of channel in the sand with brackish water moving toward the waves. Commander held two long wire forks identical to the one Mason had used for the marshmallows. “These aren’t throw-away items. I need them back for the next s’mores break.”
He searched around the area a little more and used one of the forks to pull out the partially burned remains of a s’mores bag. “Looks like somebody decided to do their own campfire. Pretty careless, not even throwing away their trash.”
He ran the bag through the sand and then touched it to make sure it was cool. Then he dropped it, along with the fork, in the canvas bag he’d brought to collect the driftwood. We were careful to walk around the remains of the campfire. Dinah went ahead toward something dark on the sand. I saw her take a step, and then she tripped and screamed.
Commander and I rushed toward her. Dinah was sprawled on the ground, and when I got close, I saw an arm clothed in a black wool jacket with pink crocheted flowers around the sleeve sticking out from below her. Commander Blaine pulled Dinah to her feet, and the three of us gasped.
CHAPTER 9
“TUR N HER OVER, TURN HER OVER,” DINAH squealed. When Dinah had gotten up, the rest of Izabelle Landers had become visible as she lay facedown in the sand.
We got Izabelle on her back, and her face looked blue and distorted. Dinah felt her wrist and thought she detected a faint pulse.
“Call 911,” she said quickly. The adrenaline rush had given Dinah’s voice a high-pitched, panicky sound. I reached for my cell phone, then realized I’d left it in my tote in the administration building. Commander didn’t have his phone, either.
“I’ll go back and call,” he said, gesturing toward the Asilomar grounds, still invisible in the fog. He walked quickly through the sand, the bag for collecting driftwood swinging on his arm.
Dinah and I knelt down in the sand on either side of Izabelle.
She looked terrible. Now that I was closer, I could see the red blotches on her face. Dinah and I tried to comfort her and tell her that we were getting help. Nothing in her face gave any indication she heard us.
I checked the area around her. A sand-encrusted s’more lay on the ground near her hand.
Commander Blaine came back to tell us the paramedics were on the way, then went to stand by the street to flag down the ambulance. Luckily we had the Asilomar gate as a landmark. It seemed like it took the paramedics forever to arrive. The fog made it impossible for them to drive fast.
Two men in dark blue uniforms hustled across the beach, carrying a stretcher and a large case. They got Izabelle on the stretcher, and one started doing CPR and put some kind of bag on her face. The other asked me what had happened, and I gave him the little information I had. I also mentioned the sandy s’more. He scooped it up and put it in a plastic bag. The paramedic working on Izabelle continued the CPR as Commander helped get the stretcher across the sand. I thought I saw Izabelle move her head as I followed them to the street.
“You better come with us,” one of the paramedics said as they loaded the stretcher into the ambulance. A police cruiser had pulled over to the curb, and two officers got out. They walked onto the beach, shaking their heads at the low visibility.
Dinah had followed us. She stood with Commander and told me not to worry, they would take care of things in my absence. All of us were operating on nerves by then. I climbed into the back of the ambulance. When I looked back, Commander and Dinah were talking to the police.
“I’m not an expert, but she looks like she had some kind of attack,” I said to the paramedic. He was too busy working on Izabelle to answer.