Without a Grave

NINE

THERE ARE STORIES ABOUT CORRUPT COPS WHO ACCEPT BRIBES, PURPOSELY FAIL TO SHOW UP FOR COMPLAINTS OR CRIME SCENES, OR FILE REPORTS ON CASES INVOLVING FRIENDS, FAMILY OR SOMEONE WILLING TO PAY FOR THEIR SILENCE, INTENTIONALLY CHOOSING TO PREVENT JUSTICE RATHER THAN ADHERING TO THEIR SWORN OATH.The Nassau Tribune, July 25 2008

After my baptism, quite literally by fire, moderating the Cruisers’ Net the rest of the week seemed like a tropical breeze.

There were the usual weather reports, arrivals and departures, a lost wallet, a found passport – ‘Don’t panic, Terri Ryburn, your passport has been found at Café Florance. Call me on seven-three after the Net and we’ll get you reunited.’

Paul had followed through on his ‘no cooking’ promise, and then some. We’d lunched at Wally’s, the Golden Grouper and Cracker P’s – but the one invitation I didn’t want to pass up was the Sunday pig roast at Nippers Beach Bar and Grill on Great Guana Cay.

Paul took my advice.

Perched high on a forty-foot dune overlooking the Atlantic, Nippers has to be experienced to be appreciated. Imagine: raffia umbrellas stirring in a gentle island breeze; picnic tables painted every color of the tropical rainbow; a double-decker pool connected by a waterfall where you can swim right up to the bar; a hat rack labeled Hang Bikini Tops Here; and sipping frozen Nippers in plastic cups while grooving to the music of a two-piece reggae band.

Self-medication never felt so good.

I remember stopping at Milo’s stand to purchase some tomatoes, and the long walk up the hill past the cemetery where a sign reminds all visitors that ‘the wages of sin is death’ – thanks for sharing! – but after enjoying my first frozen Nippers, a pink fruit juice and rum Slushee, smooth and sneaky, everything gets a bit hazy.

One drink was so yummy that I had to have two, and I may even have split a third one with Paul… hard to say. Weaving down the dunes, wading in the surf, lying down in the sand for a nice long nap, face up, no matter what Paul tells you.

Everyone says I had a good time.

All week I had been hoping for news about the body I’d found in the Wild Horses of Abaco preserve. If that had happened in Annapolis, WBAL would have been all over it. CNN, too. But, we were in the i’lans, mon. Nobody was sayin’ nuffin.

The Marsh Harbour authorities had claimed the body, and everyone assumed it would be shipped down to Nassau for an autopsy, but other than that, there was no news, no ID.

Molly Weston said that Winnie Albury told her that Forbes Albury had mentioned that one of his boatyard workers hadn’t showed up for a week. Everyone assumed he’d gone back to Haiti, to visit an ill mother someone said, but nobody knew for sure.

I’d wondered if my status as Net anchor would give me a leg up in the information department, but I was wrong. I made a few phone calls, but ended up none the wiser. Maybe it was because I didn’t have Pattie’s connections.

When the next edition of The Abaconian hit the stands, I snagged a copy, but the article didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know:Police retrieved the body, which had been severely burned, and had it transported to the Marsh Harbour Community Clinic, where it was officially pronounced dead.While police do not suspect foul play at this time, the body will be flown to New Providence, where an autopsy will be performed in order to determine the exact cause of death.Central Detective Unit officers from Grand Bahama are presently on the island assisting officers there with the investigation.

‘Officially pronounced dead.’ I shuddered. As if there ever had been any question of that.

After the Net, I puttered over to Hawksbill in Pro Bono and went looking for Gator Crockett, dive shopowner, unofficial constable, island point man for reckless teens, Mr Knock-a-Few-Heads-Together. I found him in the shack he laughingly called his office, patching a wetsuit with DAP contact cement. Justice, the potcake, lay snoozing at his feet.

I watched Gator work for a while before he noticed me.

‘Morning.’ He waved a glue brush. ‘Sit.’

I parked my buns in a plastic lawn chair that see-sawed alarmingly on the uneven dirt floor. ‘Can you talk for a minute?’

He nodded, pressing the edges of the patch together with his fingers.

‘I was the one who tripped over the body after the wildfire.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘I’ve been waiting to hear that the body’s been identified, but nothing’s been reported so far. I was wondering if you’d heard anything.’

Gator tossed the glue brush into a tin can, considered me with pale-blue eyes, saying nothing.

I tried again. ‘Who can I call?’

The corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been the beginning of a smile. ‘You don’t call. You don’t want to get involved. If the police find out you’re the one who stumbled over the body, and it turns out that there was foul play…’ The smile vanished. ‘Best case, you’re tied up in the court system for years. Worst case, they’ll turn you into a suspect.’

Don’t get involved. The same advice I’d received from Mimi, but still I said, ‘You’re kidding me.’

Gator shrugged. ‘It’s happened.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘You keep your mouth shut.’

Hannah Ives keeping her mouth shut. If Paul had been there, he’d have been laughing hysterically.

Perhaps it was the Anglophile in me, but I tended to trust organizations with the word ‘royal’ in their titles, organizations like ‘The Royal Bahamian Police Force.’ That said, I hadn’t exactly been dazzled by the notices I’d read about the outfit on the Abaco tourist blogs. Consider this: Police have few emergency vehicles, streets and houses are unmarked, so the best thing to do when you are a crime victim is go to the police station nearest you and provide transportation to the crime scene. CSI it wasn’t.

‘If I knew anything, I’d certainly tell you,’ Gator had concluded before powering off with Justice and some tourists for an all-day, two-tank dive on Fowl Cay.

And I had to be satisfied with that.

As if to compensate, it had been happy days on the Net. No email emergencies except the good kind – a baby granddaughter for the couple anchored behind Scotland Cay on Always Something - and lost-and-founds with happy endings.

A boat cat answering to Marmalade had gone missing after an altercation with a local potcake, but had turned up the following day snacking happily on conch bits behind George’s conch salad stand next door to the Harbour View Marina on Bay Street. It’s a troubling thought, but more people were worried and out searching for that cat than cared about whoever it was who had burned to a crisp on the preserve.

Happily, the wildfires were out.

The weather continued happily, too. Sunny, highs in the eighties, chance of widely scattered thunderstorms.

And, ugly as it was, every cruiser seemed to share a we’re-all-in-this-together camaraderie as we watched our stock portfolios go up and down like an Episcopalian in church.

Like I said, it was Same-Old-Same-Old on the Net, until the morning Tony Sands called in on open mike.

I was taking calls as usual.

‘Sea’s the Day, I hear you. Stand by. Anyone else?’

‘Reel Time’ I hear you, too. Stand by. Anyone else?’ When no one else spoke up, I continued. ‘Nothing heard. Go ahead Sea’s the Day.’

Brian Jones on Sea’s the Day was a new arrival to the Abacos and needed to know where to get a haircut (Lanie’s Cuts and Curls in Memorial Plaza), and where to find an ATM that dispenses US dollars. (As if!) With Brian half satisfied, I moved on to Tony.

‘Reel Time, go ahead Tony.’

We knew Tony fairly well. A charter fishing boat captain operating out of Man-O-War Cay, he’d taken Paul deep-sea fishing, but the only fish Paul ever landed was a thirty-pound barracuda. Not particularly edible, but it made a great picture. At least his colleagues back at the Academy were impressed.

‘I’m looking for the sailing vessel Wanderer,’ Tony broadcast, ‘a Reliant 41, green hull, three days overdue from Lake Worth, Florida. Wanderer is skippered by Frank Parker. His wife, Sally, is also aboard.’

My head swam. We knew Frank and Sally Parker! I took a deep, steadying breath and tried to remember what, as Net anchor, I was supposed to say next. I tried to keep my voice neutral as I pressed the talk button and repeated Tony’s announcement in case anyone missed it. Meanwhile, I was gesturing frantically to Paul with my free hand. As I spoke, I watched Paul’s expression change from surprise to worry.

‘Anyone seen the vessel Wanderer, a Reliant 41, come now,’ I said. The airwaves were heavy with silence as I waited hopefully for someone to call in with a positive sighting. I hated having to say, ‘Nothing heard.’

‘Is there anybody in range of Green Turtle Cay who can relay for the Net?’ I asked.

Knot Hers volunteered, and I listened again as the message about Wanderer was repeated, but again, the only response was a disappointing silence.

I tried not to worry as I hurried through a recap of the weather, completely skipped the trivia question (trivial, under the circumstances) and wound up the Net.

‘If there’s nothing further…’ I took my thumb off the talk button and waited. ‘Then the Net is clear.’

I slotted the mike into its cradle, leaned back in my chair and sighed. ‘Frank and Sally. Dear God, I hope they’re OK.’

While I had been wrapping up the Net, Paul had powered up his laptop. Now he looked up from the screen. ‘I’ve got Frank’s cellphone number here somewhere.’ He tapped a few keys. ‘After Frank retired, he and Sally were supposed to be cruising the Intracoastal. Why is Tony looking for them, I wonder?’

Paul crossed to the radio and picked up the mike, still hot and sweaty from where I’d been clutching it for almost an hour. ‘Reel Time, Reel Time, this is Windswept. Come back.’

The airwaves crackled. ‘Reel Time here, Paul. Switch and answer seven three?’

‘Seven three.’

‘Tony, what’s up?’ Paul asked after the connection was made. ‘I know Frank Parker. He used to teach oceanography at the Naval Academy, went on to consult for the Smithsonian’s environmental research center south of Annapolis. What’s he doing in the Abacos?’

‘You know the meeting in Hope Town on Wednesday?’

‘Right?’

‘Parker was going to testify on behalf of Save Hawksbill Cay.’

‘If the government didn’t believe Jean Michael Cousteau, what would make them believe Frank Parker?’

‘Parker has contacts at the University of Florida. They were refuting the claims of the environmental impact statement made by Mueller’s so-called experts. Parker’s not being paid – the scientists who wrote that report are on Mueller’s payroll – so he’s got no personal interest in the project.’

‘Do you know what Parker was going to say?’

‘That the project is an environmental catastrophe.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Well, it’s true.’

‘When did you hear from Parker last?’

‘Tuesday. He’d made the crossing and had put down his hook in Great Sale.’

The crossing. I knew that meant Frank and Sally Parker had successfully crossed the Gulf Stream from Florida, a voyage not to be taken lightly if the weather isn’t favorable. While Paul talked, I consulted the map we had taped to the side of the refrigerator. With my finger, I followed the chain of islands west from Hawksbill Cay. I found Great Sale Cay easily, almost due north from Grand Bahama. From the air, it looked like an anchor.

I knew you could sail from Great Sale to Allens-Pensacola in a day. From there to Green Turtle was another day, and if the weather was right – and it’d been nothing but fine, wind speed and direction-wise, for the past week – the trip from Green Turtle through the Whale Passage to Hawksbill couldn’t have taken more than a day. So, according to my calculations, for the whole trip I’d say three, four days, max.

When I turned back to the radio, Paul was saying, ‘Maybe they’re just taking their time?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Tony replied. ‘Last time Parker telephoned, he said he’d see me on Thursday and pop a Kalik. It’s not like him not to call if he ran into any trouble or changed his plans.’

‘I have to agree. Not like him at all. At the Academy he was always the first to turn his grades in. Not like Sally, either. She’s a friend of my wife’s going way back.’

That was the truth. Sally was the organizer’s organizer, the woman who was living proof of the saying, ‘If you want something done, find the busiest person you know.’ It was Sally who engineered my post-surgery, post-chemo dinner brigade. Every day for six weeks, someone from the Naval Academy Women’s Club had showed up on my doorstep at five thirty sharp, holding a hot casserole in her oven-mitted hands.

A thought occurred to me, and I scribbled it down on one of the Post-it notes that still littered the table. I slid it in front of Paul.

Paul picked up my note and squinted at it. ‘Was their dog with them, too?’

‘Duffy? Yeah. I even asked Winnie to order a supply of special dog food for the little yapper.’

Frank, Sally and their Scottish terrier, Duffy. Overdue. I refused to use the term ‘missing.’

It was easy, I knew all too well, to lose track of time while in paradise. Frank wasn’t scheduled to speak until Wednesday. They were probably dawdling along, anchored in an idyllic lagoon, swimming, laughing, with Duffy barking at them playfully from the bow as they splashed in the water below him.

We knew Wanderer, too, a Reliant 41 yawl built by Cheoy Lee. We’d often sailed with the Parkers on the Chesapeake before Frank’s retirement had taken them away. They had sailed, quite literally, into the sunset, following a lifelong dream. Postcards had come from Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Hilton Head, Fernandina Beach, St Augustine and Cape Canaveral as they made their way south along the inland waterway.

‘I wish I had known they were coming,’ I complained to Paul when he’d finished his conversation with Tony and had cradled the mike. ‘We’ve got plenty of room on the dock. They could have tied up there. Slept in the snore box.’

‘We’ll tell them when we see them.’ Paul laid his hand on mine and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘Don’t worry.’