Without a Grave

FIFTEEN

LOBSTERS USUALLY MOVE AROUND AND HUNT FOR FOOD AT NIGHT. IT WAS ONCE THOUGHT THAT LOBSTERS WERE SCAVENGERS AND ATE PRIMARILY DEAD THINGS. HOWEVER, RESEARCHERS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT LOBSTERS CATCH MAINLY FRESH FOOD (EXCEPT FOR BAIT), WHICH INCLUDES FISH, CRABS, CLAMS, MUSSELS, SEA URCHINS, AND SOMETIMES EVEN OTHER LOBSTERS!Lobster FAQ, NOAA’s National Marine FisheriesService, Northeast Fisheries Science Center

It wasn’t until I got back to Windswept and had sprawled on the bench at the end of our dock that I was able to think, let alone catch my breath.

Did Jaime know I was under the pier? Did he chum the water on purpose, or was it simply a case of my being in the wrong place at the wrong time? I didn’t have an answer.

When I thought I would be able to talk about what had just happened, I slogged up the dock to the house.

Paul stood at the kitchen counter holding a fork like a weapon, stabbing the life out of some meat. As I dragged myself into the room he looked up. ‘Thought we’d barbecue some steaks tonight.’

I frowned. When Paul volunteered for cooking duty, it was usually because he wanted something.

‘Hey, Hannah, what’s wrong?’

I plopped down in a kitchen chair. ‘I could really use some iced tea.’

While Paul assembled a glass, ice, tea and some lemon slices, I decided that nothing was wrong. The last thing that I needed just then was a lecture.

‘How was your expedition?’ he asked, handing me the glass. ‘Successful?’

‘Yes,’ I lied, hoping that he wouldn’t ask to inspect my haul of sand dollars.

‘Good.’ He turned his attention back to the meat, drowning it in salad oil, red wine and vinegar. ‘I hope you’re in a good mood because I need to talk to you about something.’

‘Yes?’

He unscrewed the cap from a jar of lemon pepper and started sprinkling it over the steaks. ‘It all started with Euclid.’

I closed my eyes, pressed the cool side of the glass to my temple. ‘Doesn’t it always?’

‘He wrote “Elements of Geometry” way back in 300 BC. It was so good that no other texts from that period even survive. Euclid wiped out the competition.’

I opened one eye. ‘To quote someone I know, don’t build me a clock, Paul. Just tell me what time it is.’

‘I need to go to Baltimore.’

I sat up straight in my chair, slopping iced tea down the front of my shirt. ‘You what?’

Paul grabbed the back of the chair opposite me, pushed it so close that our knees touched when he sat down on it, and took my hand. ‘Just for a few days. I need to consult a copy of the first English translation of Euclid’s Elements, the one Sir Henry Billingsley wrote in 1570.’

Marsh Harbour had a library, a small one, but I doubted they kept ancient Greeks on their shelves. ‘What’s wrong with the copy you’ve got?’ I asked. The book with the familiar green cover had been sitting on Paul’s bedside table ever since our arrival in the islands.

‘Brent Morris has an original copy, and I need to see it. Billingsley illustrates the theorems in book eleven with three-dimensional pop-ups that are glued to the pages.’

‘Can’t you use your imagination?’ I pouted.

He squeezed my hand. ‘I need to see the book, Hannah. Brent’s also trying to arrange a meeting with Andy Gleason for me. If that pans out, we’ll take the train up to Cambridge for a day. Andy’s done for calculus what I plan to do for geometry, and talking to him will be enormously valuable.’

‘When do you leave?’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Fine.’ There was no point in arguing. Paul had to work, I understood that. I was simply along for the ride.

‘It’s charming,’ Paul said a few minutes later, coming up behind me and laying a kiss on my neck.

I backed away, still steaming. ‘What’s charming?’

‘“If therefore a folide angle be contayned under three playne fuperficiall angles euery two of thofe three angles…”’

I pinched his lips together, cutting him off. ‘Do shut up.’

He enveloped me in a bear hug and rested his chin on the top of my head. ‘You’re not angry with me, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I won’t be away long.’

‘That’s what you always say.’

He tipped my chin up until he was looking directly into my eyes. ‘I mean it. This sabbatical has been the closest thing to paradise…’ He paused. ‘Well, except for the fire.’

‘Yes. Except for that.’

And except for Frank, and Sally, and their little dog, Duffy.

And whoever thought it was a good idea to frighten me away from Poinciana Cove.

The next morning I waved Paul off on the eleven thirty ferry just as Molly was pulling Good Golly up to her dock.

‘Where have you been so early?’ I shouted across the stretch of water that separated our two docks.

‘Teaching a class at the school,’ she called back. ‘Poetry, if you can believe it!’

‘Where’s Paul off to this morning?’ Molly asked a few minutes later as she joined me in my front yard.

‘Baltimore,’ I said. ‘For work.’

‘So it’s just you and me, then?’

I hadn’t thought about it, but Molly was right. Unless someone had come in overnight, Windswept and SouthernExposure were the only homes presently occupied on all of Bonefish Cay.

Molly patted my arm. ‘I vote we have lunch in town. I found another sheet of plywood under the house, so I was going to ask you to join me anyway. Thought we’d take it to Winnie. Game?’

‘You bet.’

As we pulled Good Golly up to the government dock we saw Gator standing at a wooden counter, cleaning a large snapper. The tide was out and Molly’s Zodiac sat so low in the water that I had to crane my neck to see him. ‘Hey, Gator,’ I yelled.

Fine spray misted my face as Gator used a hose to rinse fish guts off the counter. I shivered, thinking about my last encounter with fish parts.

Apparently he hadn’t heard us.

‘Gay-tor!’ This from Molly, using her outside voice. It apparently worked because water stopped trickling through the gaps in the planking.

Gator leaned over, holding on to a piling with one hand. ‘Mornin’ Hannah, Miz Molly.’

Molly pointed to the bow of her boat. ‘Got another sign for you, Gator.’

I helped Molly untie the plywood and hand it up to Gator, who promptly manhandled it down the dock and parked it temporarily against the trunk of a tree.

‘I’m heading over to Tom’s Creek,’ he said when he rejoined us on the deck, standing near the stern of Deep Magic. ‘Got a few lobster traps out that way. Going over to check.’

‘For lobsters?’

Gator picked up a blue plastic case about the size of a lunchbox that had been sitting on the fish-cleaning counter. ‘Hear that Mueller’s started running his desalinization plant. Low-impact, ha ha ha. Want to see what it’s doing to the creek.’

‘Is that a testing kit?’ I asked as we watched Gator climb into his boat. We’d used something similar to test the ancient pipes in our Annapolis home for lead.

‘Yup.’

Molly looked at me and I knew what she was thinking. An adventure. ‘Can we come along?’ I asked.

‘Sure. Hop in.’

While Gator manned the helm and Justice rode on the bow like a figurehead, his ears flapping, Molly and I shared a bench in the stern, our heads just inches away from a honking big Yamaha 225 outboard. If we’d wanted to talk, we’d have had to use sign language. I knew a little bit, but I wasn’t sure about Molly.

Gator throttled down as he guided the boat through the harbor, skirting the Tamarind Tree Marina and its mooring field, but once he nosed out of the cut, he gunned it. Before Deep Magic had even reached twenty miles per hour, she popped up on a plane, dancing over the waves as if they didn’t exist.

We flew past Poinciana Point heading northwest. We passed Kelchner’s Cove, where the family’s locked up cottage lay, rounded the tip of the island and headed into the open sea.

‘How do you know where the traps are?’ Molly screamed over the thunder of the engine.

‘GPS!’ he shouted back. A few minutes later I heard a faint peep-peep-peep as Gator throttled down, cut the engine and dropped anchor in about ten feet of water.

I looked overboard. Bingo! Deep Magic floated almost directly over a lobster trap. A cinder block weighted it down.

Gator donned his mask, strapped on a weight belt, and gathered up his tools – a narrow rod about three feet long called a tickle stick, and a net.

Molly and I knelt on the white vinyl seats, our elbows resting on the gunwale, watching Gator as he slipped over the side. He floated over the trap for a moment, took a deep breath, then dived. We watched him circle the trap, the tickle stick in one hand, the net in the other.

After two circumnavigations, Gator surfaced, spit out his snorkel to say, ‘It’d be easier if you helped, Hannah.’

‘I’d be glad to.’ It was a hot day; the water would feel good.

‘Got a bathing suit?’ he asked.

I tugged on my tank top. ‘Underneath.’ I turned to Molly. ‘Want to come?’

Eyes wide in mock panic, she pressed a hand to her chest and said, ‘Moi? No thanks. I think I’ll just watch.’

It took only half a minute for me to strip to my bathing suit and join Gator overboard.

What appeared from the deck of Deep Magic as an undulating square of metal, I could see clearly now. A forest of long, whip-like feelers and the smaller, spiny limbs that gave the lobster its name, waved at me from the perimeter of the trap. Using his hands, Gator showed me how to plant the net. Meanwhile, he used his tickle stick to entice one of the lobsters out of his hiding place. As I watched, keeping the net firmly pressed against the bottom as instructed, he tapped smartly on the lobster’s white-spotted shell, annoying the creature until it scooted backwards into the net I was holding.

Gator collected the net from me, and we bobbed to the surface. ‘Easy to see if the bug’s legal size,’ he burbled as he popped his snorkel, ‘but we need to make sure it’s not female.’ He turned the brownish-green lobster over while still in the net, examined the shape of the fins, checked for telltale eggs.

‘Good to go! How many you want?’

Looking up into the boat, shielding my eyes from the sun, I had a silent consultation with Molly.

‘Dinner at my place tonight, then,’ Molly said. ‘So four? Five?’

‘You can freeze them,’ Gator suggested.

‘Six, then.’

Gator transferred his catch from the net into a lobster bag hanging from a rope tied to one of Deep Magic’s cleats. ‘Your turn.’ He handed me the tickle stick.

I examined it like some skinny alien being, then handed it back. ‘I’d like to see you do it one more time.’

Gator nodded, dragged his mask down over his eyes and nose, and ducked once again under the surface. I took a deep breath and followed.

Once again, I placed the net and held it steady while Gator used the tickle stick to walk a lobster backwards into it. We shot to the surface to check the legal status of our catch and transferred it to the bag. This time, Gator handed me the tickle stick and we headed back down.

Back at the trap, I picked an unlucky lobster and tried to tease it out from under the trap. It was harder than it looked. Instead of coming out, the creature backed away. I used the tickle stick to probe for it, but he’d disappeared under the siding.

Using a scooping motion that was probably not quite kosher, I swept the stick under the trap, trying to coax the lobster from its hiding place, but it must have scuttled out of range.

I shot to the surface, took a deep breath of air, then headed back down to try again. When I withdrew the stick this time, I’d caught something on it, but it wasn’t a lobster. It was a bit of white knit fabric.

I extended the tickle stick in Gator’s direction, shrugged. He picked the fabric off, and we bobbed to the surface, where Gator slid his mask to the top of his head and examined the object in the sun. ‘Looks like a bit of sock.’

‘You use socks in your traps?’

‘Nope.’ He looked puzzled.

‘Do lobsters drag objects into their dens with them?’

‘Never known it to happen, Hannah. Let’s have a look.’

We repositioned our masks and sank to the bottom again. Gator pushed the cinder block off the trap, and with me standing on one side and he on the other, we lifted the platform.

There were lobsters under it all right. Dozens of them. Startled by the sudden blast of sunlight, they scampered in every direction.

But what they were feeding on made me gag. I spit out my snorkel, shot to the surface, and held on to the swim ladder at the stern of the boat with both hands while I quietly parted company with my breakfast.

‘Hannah! What’s wrong?’ Molly peered at me over the side, her hands white knuckled, gripping the rail. ‘Is Gator OK?’

‘Oh, my God.’ I felt dizzy. I tried to take deep breaths, but ended up retching instead. Molly leaned over me solicitously, patting my hand.

In the meantime, Gator had surfaced nearby, his snorkel dangling. He laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘Take it easy, Hannah.’

‘Seasick?’ Molly asked.

When I didn’t answer, Gator said, ‘She’s had a shock. Bodies down there. Two of ’em.’

Two bodies, fully clothed, staring up into nothingness with wide, sightless eyes. One was a woman, I had no doubt of that. As I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing, her dark hair had drifted, swayed in the current like seaweed around her ruined face.

Gator coughed. ‘Never seen anything like that before.’

Molly’s gaze was fixed on the hideous spot in the water. ‘Can you tell who they are?’

Gator rubbed his eyes. ‘Lobsters did quite a job on the soft tissues of their faces.’ He paused, glanced from Molly to me and back again, seeming to flush under his tan. ‘Sorry.’

‘I set the trap back down to keep the bodies from floating away,’ he continued, ‘but before I did, I found this.’ He uncurled his fingers. In his palm lay a broad gold wedding band. ‘It might mean something to you, Hannah.’

With my free hand, I picked the ring out of Gator’s palm and examined it in the sunlight. Engraving inside the band read, FP+SA 9/5/62.

Frank and Sally Parker.

Gator waited until I was safely up the swim ladder before climbing back into the boat himself. Using strong hands on each of my shoulders, he practically forced me down on a bench, then wrapped me in a foul-weather jacket. In spite of the warmth of the sun, I began to shiver. I drew the jacket more tightly around my shoulders. ‘Were they…?’ I stuttered. ‘Could you tell…?’ I swallowed the words.

Without answering, Gator crossed to the console and reached for his microphone. ‘Didn’t crawl under there themselves.’ He pressed the talk button. ‘Dive Guana, Dive Guana. This is Deep Magic. Come in, Troy.’

‘Things like this simply don’t happen here,’ Molly said while we waited for Troy to show up with the rescue boat from Guana Cay, although there was precious little to rescue. For Frank and Sally Parker it was way too late.

‘Only seventy-some murders in all the islands last year,’ Gator told us. He sat bent over, hands dangling between his knees. ‘Fifty of them in Nassau. Drug-related, of course.’

I scratched Nassau off my list of one thousand and one places to see before I died and asked, ‘What do we do now?’

‘Wait for Troy.’

‘And after that?’

‘As I said before. Nothing. Getting involved with the Bahamian police can take years off your life.’

I felt like screaming, but managed a croak. ‘Gator! You can’t not report this! Those people were my friends!’

‘You mistook my meaning, Hannah. I’m just asking you to let Troy and me handle it.’

I folded my arms across my chest, hugging myself for warmth. Tears pooled in my eyes, spilled over and ran hotly down my cheeks. ‘What I want to know is what Frank and Sally are doing here, dead, when the last time they were seen was miles away in Eleuthera.’

‘We only have Jaime’s word for that. And Jaime’s word is worth, what? Next to nothing?’

Molly blinked rapidly, fighting tears, too. ‘Ain’t worth shee-it! He killed them, didn’t he?’

‘Somebody sure did,’ Gator said.

‘Who else could have done it? Frank and Sally go missing, then Jaime shows up sailing their boat.’ I shrugged out of the jacket, picked up my shorts and top. ‘Why else was he having Wanderer repainted? Idiot thought nobody would notice.’ I shivered. ‘How did he think he was going to get away with it, Gator?’

‘It’s early in the lobster season. He probably thought that by the time I got around to checking the traps, the lobsters would have done their work.’

As Deep Magic rocked gently at anchor on the undulating sea, I staggered to the stern where I untied the lobster bag from the cleat and dumped our catch over the side.

No one protested.

Exhausted, I sat down and rested my forehead on the gunwale, as soothing as a cool washcloth. While Molly rubbed my back, I thought about Jaime’s victims, all of Jaime’s victims. Frank and Sally Parker, the mangroves, the reef, the sea turtles and even poor Alice Madonna Robinson. ‘The man is evil, pure evil.’

Molly wrapped an arm around me and squeezed. ‘The question is, what are we going to do about it?’

Later, much later, Molly and I sat on her porch, a dinner of leftover spaghetti glistening under candlelight. The power had gone out again. Adding insult to injury, Paul had left for Baltimore with the generator he’d purchased still packed in its box, so I’d collected my frozen food from the freezer and taken it over to Molly’s where lights were on in her kitchen, her generator humming.

Molly’s contribution to dinner had been a salad, a delicious mix of spinach and romaine, but I only nibbled on mine.

‘You have to eat sometime, Hannah.’

‘But not now.’ I bit my lower lip, lost in thought. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind, Molly. Frank and Sally… God!’

She laid down her fork. ‘It’s the body bags that got me, Hannah. Hefty Cinch Saks! Mah gawd. I kept reading the side of that box – new, unscented odor block technology. I swear I’ll never be able to use a Hefty bag again.’

The three strands of noodle and two slices of tomato that I’d managed to choke down threatened to make a reappearance, but I pressed my fingernails into my palms and took deep breaths until the feeling passed.

‘Gator called,’ Molly told me. ‘Said Troy would take the bodies to Marsh Harbour. Apparently they have some sort of make-do morgue over there. After a doctor declares them dead…’ Her voice trailed off into the darkness beyond the candlelight.

‘As if there’s any doubt.’ I cringed. ‘Then they’ll be taken to Nassau for autopsy, like that poor fellow who died in the wildfire.’

Molly sipped her wine, then set the glass down. ‘I practically live here, but I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing, as you can well imagine. But the Parkers are American citizens. Won’t US authorities be involved?’

‘Only if invited by the Bahamians, Gator told me. Otherwise the Royal Bahamas Police handle all investigations themselves.’

‘And we’re sure they’re not going to mess up the investigation, how?’

I studied my friend in the candlelight, her eyes bright with tears. ‘I’m going to make some phone calls, Molly. First to Paul…’

‘FBI?’ she interrupted.

I nodded. ‘Interpol, too, if necessary.’

‘Good.’ Molly stood, dinner plate in hand. ‘Tell me, Hannah. What did you say to Gator when he dropped us off?’

‘I suggested that if we wanted a proper investigation, we should take Frank and Sally to the waters off Fort Lauderdale and set their bodies afloat off the beach.’ I snorted, then cackled. Even to myself, I sounded hysterical. ‘And you know what?’

‘What?’

‘He half agreed with me.’

‘But the police say they found no trace of foul play aboard Wanderer! They even gave custody of the boat back to Jaime Mueller until he can contact the Parkers… well, I guess now it’d be their heirs. Makes me sick.’ Using her fork, she scraped the scraps from her plate over the porch rail. Snack time for the hermit crabs who lived under the oleander.

‘The Parkers didn’t have any children,’ I said.

‘Oh. In that case, Jaime Mueller’s probably the proud owner of a used boat.’

‘Maybe Jaime didn’t kill them on their boat, Molly. Maybe he murdered them on shore. Their dinghy’s never been found, you know.’

A theory took shape in my mind. I imagined Wanderer bobbing peacefully at anchor in Poinciana Cove. Frank and Sally, after dark, motoring their dinghy ashore. Dragging it up on the sand and hiding it in the mangroves. Creeping up the beach, into the woods, looking around and checking for… what? Something that was polluting the reef?

‘What’s Jaime’s motive, Hannah? Surely not possession of the sailboat. He could buy ten sailboats like Wanderer easy, cold cash in a suitcase.’

I discarded my first theory and went with the obvious. ‘I think Frank and Sally anchored in the cove, and Frank went down for a night dive, like he told the captain of Northern Lights he was going to. Then he saw something that Jaime or somebody else didn’t want him to see.’

‘Like what?’

I picked a crescent of celery out of my salad, popped it into my mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘Something illegal, of course.’

‘Like what?’

‘Smuggling leaps to mind,’ I said, thinking about the little cottage in Kelchner’s Cove all locked up nice and tight. ‘Maybe he brought in stuff for his resort that he didn’t want to pay thirty percent duty on. Computers, for example. Or air conditioners. Booze?’

‘Interesting theory, Hannah, but El Mirador Land Corporation has deep pockets. Hard to imagine any of those fat cats risking life in prison to save a couple of thousand bucks on air conditioners.’

‘Hard to say what rich folks will do to save a few bucks,’ I mused aloud. ‘Think about Martha Stewart.’ Another thought occurred to me. ‘Could be drugs.’

‘Yikes! That would be dangerous.’

‘I can tell you one thing, Molly. If the Bahamian cops don’t nail Jaime’s ass to the wall, I swear to God, I will.’

For the first time that evening, Molly looked at me and smiled. ‘And I kin help,’ she drawled.