Our Island Inn (Quirky Tales from the Caribbean) Read Free Page A

but the memory was still fresh among the island’s West Indian population. A superstitious crowd, the elders could recount the locations and specifics of killings that took place during the slave era three centuries earlier, so they were unlikely to forget the details of such recent violence.
    According to the local lore, a husband and wife once operated a small inn at Parrot Ridge. Presumably, this was the source of the ruins that we had cleared for our buildings.
    The location was just as jaw-dropping then as it was now, and the business thrived, particularly when the pair opened a restaurant with seating on the deck by the pool.
    It was an idyllic layout, but trouble brewed beneath the surface.
    E veryone on the island knew the husband had picked up a girlfriend on the side. The wife tried to look the other way, hoping that his philandering was a phase that would soon pass. The husband interpreted her silence as acquiescence and expanded his flirtatious third party antics.
    One night, an argument broke out in the restaurant kitchen.
    I n a fit of jealous rage, the wife stabbed her cheating spouse with a butcher knife. He bled out by the pool in front of the dinner guests. Distraught, the woman threw herself off the deck, falling to the ground at the lower edge of the clearing.
    The police never found the wife’s body. She either crawled into the dense jungle to die – or she was dragged into it by some animal that lived within.
    To this day, m ost locals believe the latter.
    B y consuming the woman’s flesh, they say, the forest creature took on her fraught human emotions, spawning a demonic spirit that would forever haunt Parrot Ridge.
    After my experiences, I tend to agree with them.

Chapter 4
Charlie the Chicken
    TWO MONTHS AFTER their first visit to Parrot Ridge, Glenn and Oliver signed the paperwork that closed their island real estate deal.
    T he proud new owners celebrated their purchase with a semi-romantic dinner by the beach. The resort where they were staying provided catering to their bungalow, and they ordered in a feast of steak and lobster. Oliver searched through the kitchen’s varied assortment of dishes and selected the nicest looking plates and silverware. He laid everything out on a beach blanket, along with an ice bucket and a chilled bottle of bubbly.
    They sat down to eat just as the sunset reached a perfect flaming orange.
    Oliver raised his champagne glass.
    “To Our Island Inn,” he said, holding it aloft.
    Glenn looked nervously over his shoulder before doing the same.
    “To Our Island Inn,” he replied, quickly clinking Oliver’s glass.
    A swarm of mosquitoes soon drove them inside. The steak was overdone, and the lobster was chewy, but nothing could dampen the mood.
    Their adventure had begun.
    ~ ~ ~
    EARLY THE NEXT morning, Oliver flew back to the States. As quickly as possible, he would wrap up their California business interests, sell their house, package their nonessential belongings for storage, and arrange for the rest to be shipped south.
    Glenn would remain on the island to supervise the inn’s construction, obtain the necessary licenses for the B&B, and interview candidates for the cooking and cleaning staff.
    The pair spoke to each other regularly over the phone, but the lengthy separation was tough, particularly on Oliver.
    Each long-distance conversation revolved around Glenn’s exciting island discoveries and escapades. All Oliver had to contribute was the myriad but mundane details of their former life and its interminable close out.
    In the head-to-head of tedium versus adventure, there was no competition in whose life was more interesting.
    Glenn always tried to listen politely to Oliver’s dreary recountings, but his focus was clearly on the island.
    “I finally found a couple to run the restaurant,” he said excitedly during one of their late-night phone calls. “Maya and Jesús are great. We hit it off immediately.”
    The husband and wife team had been the