Everyone's Dead But Us Read Online Free

the same time, I wasn’t planning to make my announcement to the general world.
    Sherebury rounded on me and snapped, “You’ll have to wait.” I was taken aback. I didn’t blame him for snapping, but why pick me, not her? It was the first time an employee of the island had ever been anything but unfailingly polite in a response to me. He turned his back on us. He spoke to the woman. The fury in his voice was barely controlled. “This resort is no place for you.”
    I guess I could have said something to the effect that my news trumped any of the petty shit he was used to dealing with. Presumably he’d feel pretty chagrined when he found out he’d snapped at an announcement of murder. I was emotionally keyed up, but he was going to feel like a fool when I told him. I wondered if a tap on his shoulder would irritate him and make his embarrassment the greater when he found out. Then I figured I wasn’t going to play emotional blackmail. Awful things had happened. I didn’t need to add to the misery. The body wasn’t going anywhere, although finding the killer would require some very decisive action.
    The woman was saying to Sherebury “There’s a storm out there, you twit. Our engine died. We thought we were going to die. It was by happenstance that we stumbled onto this island.”
    “It’s on the maps.”
    “Maybe on the largest navigational charts, yes, but not even the largest ordinary maps. Is there some reason no one wanted this island to be noticed?”
    “We don’t want intruders,” Sherebury said.
    “Fuck your intruders,” the woman said. “Are you insane? No one is going out in that storm.”
    “You’ll have to sleep on your boat in the harbor.”
    She glanced out to the harbor. Inside the breakwater the swells caused the boats to rock and heave. It would be an unpleasant night aboard any of them. “Ours is too small,” she said. “It would be untenable. Whose yacht is that?”
    “I’m sorry, that’s all I can do for you.”
    She said, “You haven’t done anything, you officious twit. Go to hell.”
    Sherebury glared at her with icy equanimity.
    She shrugged her shoulders inside her brown poncho. But she and her minions started the trek back toward one of the piers at which one small boat was docked.
    Sherebury turned back to us. He drew a deep breath and said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I deeply apologize for snapping at you. Everything has gone wrong today, everything.”
    I said, “I’m afraid something even more wrong has happened.”
    “Yeah,” he said, “some of the electricity is out. I can’t tell which parts. The phones and the Internet don’t work. We’ve got the emergency generators working so most of the lights and appliances still function.” I’d never heard him rattle on so. Was he nervous about the storm, the ranting woman, or was my announcement going to be less news to him than I thought? He continued prattling. “How can I help you gentlemen? There’s probably not much I
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do. The evening shift left on the catamaran and the replacement shift never left Santorini. Someone on that side had the sense to know that the storm was going to be a killer.”
    As he talked he looked almost exclusively at Scott. At times I thought Sherebury looked at Scott with more interest than that of an employee willing to assist within the call of duty, more as if he’d be willing to help Scott out of his clothes, into a bed, and devour him for a night. He was too well trained to completely ignore me, but I definitely felt I was an annoying part of the background for him while he dealt with my partner. I’d run into that a few times with people from almost every economic stratum. The rich added their own little twists, usually some combination of barely concealed condescension or sarcasm. How much money I didn’t have compared to the very rich, gay and straight, didn’t bother me, but it often made a difference to them. A few of the old money people we met