“I don’t feel like going back yet,” Josephine declared. “It’s our last night together before everybody leaves the island. Let’s make it special.”
“Yes!” Ruth agreed. “Why should we go back to the house? Let’s stay out all night.”
“Whoopee!” Varina chortled. “I ain’t ever had a spend-the-night before.”
Josephine glanced over at her young friend. “Girls, I believe Varina is officially tiddled.”
“Tiddled?” Varina frowned.
“Yep,” Ruth nodded. “Sloshed. Rip-roaring.”
“What’s that?” Varina asked, grabbing another sandwich.
“Sweetie,” Millie said, “I think you’re…”
Before she could finish the sentence, Varina grimaced. “Uh-oh.” She stood and dashed toward the nearest dune, before bending over and being violently sick.
“Drunk,” Josephine agreed.
Varina made it back to the blanket, where she collapsed, holding her head between both her hands. “I don’t feel so good. My head is spinning.”
Millie found a napkin in the basket and dabbed Varina’s face with it. “Sit up,” she said gently. “You’ll feel better.”
***
“It’s all my fault,” Millie said after Varina made two more trips to the sand dune. “I never should have given her that champagne. She’s too young to drink. I feel awful that she feels so awful.”
Suddenly, they saw a flash of lightning on the water, followed by the low rumble of thunder in the distance. A moment later, fat, warm raindrops splashed onto the blanket.
They all looked up at the sky, where black-tinged clouds drifted across the full moon.
Josephine swatted at a mosquito feasting on her arm. “Storm coming, girls.I think we’d better go. And these darned skeeters are eating me alive.” She pointed at Varina, who was sitting with her head buried in her hands. “But we can’t take her home like this. Her father would never forgive me. He’s a teetotaling Church of God preacher.” She stood up and brushed the sand from her clothes.
“Should we take her back to Shellhaven?” Millie asked.
Josephine had a gleam in her eye. “I’ve got a better idea.”
“I hope it’s better than combining bourbon and champagne,” Ruth said.
“We’ll go to the old lighthouse. To the lighthouse keeper’s cottage.”
“What about the lighthouse keeper?” Millie asked. “Won’t he object?”
“He’s long gone. The government decommissioned the lighthouse a couple of years ago, and now the cottage is abandoned. Locked up tight.”
“So how do we get in?”
Josephine grinned impishly. “I’m not supposed to know, but Gardiner keeps a key under the floor mat of the roadster. I think he used the cottage for his secret assignations.”
“Assignations?” Ruth said with a hoot. “If it’s such a secret, how do you happen to know about it?”
“That’s easy. Like the good little girl detective I am, I followed him one night and peeped in the window.”
“You didn’t!” Millie said, shocked. But a moment later, she asked. “Who was he with?”
“Some silly little blond floozie that he met at a dance at the Cloister,” Josephine said dismissively. “You should have heard her carrying on when Gardiner took off his shirt.”
“Jo!” Millie said, shocked to her core. “You didn’t actually watch!”
