Danger at the Dive Shop

by Mary Jane Hathaway

  Kitty craned her neck to peek at the other guests waiting on benches in their cheery orange life jackets. Two of them wore matching lime green windbreakers and Kitty felt a powerful wave of recognition. Surely not.

  Mark jumped aboard and minutes later Penny and Elaine clambered after him. They wore identical lime green windbreakers and Toto had on matching lime green doggy life jacket. Kitty started to smile, despite the realization that her treasure hunt was now going to include two former tour group guests who never seemed to stop talking. Of course, since they were both deaf, scuba diving wasn’t going to keep them from chatting at Kitty even as she paddled around looking for gold.

  Penny glanced up and her eyes went wide. Her gray hair was neatly covered in a hot pink cap. “Kitty,” she signed. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Kitty couldn’t help laughing and waving. “What are the odds that we end up on the same boat?”

  “Pretty good since we’re stalking you.” Nearly missing a step, Elaine rushed forward, wrapping Kitty in a hug. Stepping back, she looked her up and down. “I’m kidding, of course. You’re our favorite guide, but you need a break from us sometimes. Your vacation is treating you well, I see.”

  “Thank you. It’s wonderful to see you both.” Kitty could feel the eyes of the rest of the group on them as they signed. She didn’t feel offended, only grateful that Elaine and Penny hadn’t had to fight for Toto to join the group. Since Coleman was busy with another scuba trip, Mark was in charge, and he’d never said a word about Chica.

  Kitty smiled when she saw the two dogs touch noses. Service dogs knew better than to interact with other animals while on duty, but Toto and Chica were old friends by now. Several cruises together and a scuba trip meant they could bend the rules a little.

  “Angelina here,” she pointed toward the young woman, “has been really wonderful with Chica while I’m diving.”

  “Oh, good. I was nervous when they said we’d be with a different group today.” Elaine let out a sigh of relief. “We couldn’t pass up the chance to look for sunken treasure, you know.”

  “You, too? My whole group seems to be obsessed with it. I thought there would be a riot when the dive shop owner said he wasn’t going to come here.” Kitty glanced around. The nice thing about sign language was how you could gossip in public without worry. But she also knew never to assume. She’d heard plenty of stories about people having extremely private conversations in front of people they thought couldn’t understand them, and who then experienced a rude awakening when the observers started to laugh.

  “It’s better than Bingo, baby!” Penny bounced on her toes, her expression gleeful.

  “I’m not sure about that.” Kitty had a not-so-secret devotion to the game with the numbered cards and the colored daubers. Her life wouldn’t be half as enjoyable without Bingo. Treasure hunting definitely tickled the same place she kept her love for Bingo, but instead of nice, orderly rows of cards and a glammed-up number caller, they were shrugging on oxygen tanks.

  “Sure it is,” said Elaine. “I can feel it. Of course, it’s all chemicals. Did you know…” She paused to put on bright pink diving gloves that matched her flippers. With the lime green windbreaker and the orange lifejacket, she looked one of the tropical fish Kitty had seen yesterday in the reef. “The body secretes ten times more dopamine during gambling than using cocaine? I read that in a Scientific American article about gambling.”

  Kitty covered a grimace. That was a chilling thought. She didn’t like the idea of her beloved Bingo being in any way compared to cocaine. She didn’t know much about the drug, but she knew it made a person do terrible things. As far as she knew, nobody had ever been seriously harmed over Bingo. “I guess that explains all the boats out here,” she said.

  Mark finished checking the equipment and seemed to be giving last minute instructions to the other two new passengers, a pair of young men. He hurried to Penny and Elaine. “You’ve both dived before, right?”

  Kitty explained quickly that they were deaf, and translated his question. His face went slack with surprise but he covered it quickly. He nodded as Penny reassured him that they knew what they were doing.

  “Good. You have any questions, make you sure ask Angelina or myself. Glad to have you on board.”

  Kitty was still wary after watching his interaction with Angelina, but she approved of his hospitality. Even though he was dealing with unexpected guests and a scheduling mishap, he made sure they felt welcomed. It was the opposite of what Coleman would do, she was sure.

  Taking his place at the stern, he pulled away from the dock and headed around the rocky outcropping, toward Punta Molas.

  Kitty faced into the wind, feeling her pulse quicken the closer they came to the sandy flats. She could see the lighthouse in the distance. Originally red and white striped, the color had faded to a dark pink. It was small compared to the lighthouses she’d seen on the Eastern seaboard but there was something charming about its rounded top and cheery colors.

  Mark slowed the motor as they joined a group of boats clustered around the dark reefs. Elaine and Penny helped each other out of their life jackets and windbreakers. The sun was above the horizon now and the air had warmed up by several degrees. Angelina pointed to somewhere on the map and Mark nodded, moving farther away from the busy area.

  Andrew stood up and made his way to the stern. “I thought we were gonna go to the area closest to the lighthouse. Over there.” He pointed back to where the group of boats had settled. “That’s where the treasure is.”

  Kitty quickly translated for Penny and Elaine, who both perked up considerably at that news.

  “Nobody knows where it is, or if there is any. It’s too busy over there. We’re going to get out of the fray. It’ll be better that way, believe me.” Mark smiled at him, but Andrew shook his head.

  “No, everybody says the treasure is over there. Y’all said we’d be coming here so we could look for it, and now you’re gonna to take us somewhere else. What a rip off,” he said, his face twisting in anger.

  Uh oh. Apparently Andrew hadn’t realized that gold wasn’t in his future after all.

  “You can head over there if you want. It won’t take you long. We’re dropping anchor here, and that’s all there is to it.” Mark put his hands on his hips and stood, feet apart, looming over Andrew.

  For a moment, Kitty thought the two men would come to blows, but Andrew shrugged and turned to the rest of the group. “Y’all know I’m right. Whoever wants to look for it had better come with me.”

  Ren and Jenny exchanged glances.

  “We only heard it was in this area,” Ren said. “Nothing specific.”

  “Well, I got dive buddies who’ve been out here a couple dozen times and they said it was there.” Andrew pointed again.

  “If they’ve been out there so many times, that probably means it’s not there, right?” Jenny asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Joan said. “Maybe they just didn’t look in the right place.” Lisa nodded vehemently, her dive goggles slipping from her forehead.

  “Exactly. And Mark here is tryin’ to keep the place to himself!”

  Mark shook his head, as if to say Whatever, buddy. Again, Kitty was impressed with his control and wondered why Angelina hadn’t been treated with the same calm attitude. “Everybody get ready. We’ve got a couple of tours today and I need to have the boat back by ten. You have about an hour to explore. We’ll be taking a headcount at nine, then we’ll have some refreshments, then back to the dive shop.”

  Despite the tension, the group wandered toward the area of the boat where the railing detached and the divers could sit until it was their turn to roll backwards into the water. Kitty hadn’t been keen about falling blindly the first day, but when Mark had explained how easy it was to dislodge the regulator or hoses and end up having to re-board the boat in order to fix her equipment, she’d embraced the idea.

  “Stay with Angelina and Toto,” Kitty said to Chica. Instead of mov
ing toward her, Chica walked to the railing and looked into the water, her whole body signaling that there was something down there.

  “Yes, lots of fish. Come on, you can’t go with me.” Kitty hooked a finger in Chica’s collar and led her toward Angelina. After a few seconds, Chica stopped trying to see into the water and settled under Angelina’s lounge chair. Angelina reached down and rubbed Chica’s ears.

  “She seems real comfortable with her,” Elaine said, goggling at the sight of Chica parting from Kitty so willingly.

  “She probably fed her some sausage,” Kitty said, trying not to feel defensive. The next moment, she felt remorse at implying Chica could be bought with a treat. Sure, she was a dog, but she was also the smartest and most intuitive animal Kitty had ever met.

  As they all lined up to have their gear checked and rechecked, Kitty glanced over at Chica one last time. It was true that Chica stayed close to Kitty. As long as they’d been friends, Chica had preferred Kitty to everyone and anything else. And vice versa. Maybe there was something more to Angelina, something that Chica sensed and Kitty did not.

  A feeling of foreboding settled over Kitty as the group dropped, one by one, into the water. Penny went, signing “woman overboard” before grabbing her regulator and flopping backwards. Elaine was more sedate, but still pointed to Kitty and signed that she would see her down there. Soon it was Kitty’s turn. She sat on the edge of the boat and glanced backwards. The water was only a few feet below, and she could see her fellow scuba divers making their way in several directions away from the boat.

  Turning forward again, Kitty glanced at Chica. She was stretched under Angelina’s chair, but her focus was on the water. Kitty shivered at her expression. Danger, Chica was saying. Danger below.

  Of course the ocean was dangerous. There were sharks and stingrays and all sorts of odd creatures. She couldn’t live her life cocooned by the fire in her bookstore, or pampered on a luxury cruise her whole life. She had to get out and explore the world in all its incredible beauty, dangerous sea creatures and all.

  Shaking off the fear, Kitty closed her eyes, grabbed her regulator in one hand, pressed her dive mask with the other, and dropped into the ocean.

  Chapter Four

  “Believe me, when you die, it's everybody else's problem but yours.”

  ― Cecelia Ahern

  Kitty dropped below the surface. As the noise of the outside world cut out like someone turning off the TV, she felt an instantaneous relaxation in her muscles. It was soothing, peaceful.

  She took a few moments to get her bearings and then looked around. The water in Cozumel is unnaturally clear and that’s one reason it made for such spectacularly diving. Kitty could see Andrew motioning for others to follow him toward the reef near the rocky outcropping. Even from where Kitty floated, she could see dozens of other divers milling about the area. For just a moment, she felt the urge to swim as fast as she could after Andrew and join the race toward the most likely spot for the treasure. But then she glanced around her and saw the miles of reef stretching in three directions. There was no reason to fight so many other people for a spot.

  The two young men from the other boat followed Andrew, and close behind went Jenny and Ren. The three middle aged women slowly made their way in the same direction, stopping every so often to point out small fish or take a closer look into the crevices of the reef.

  A touch on her arm made Kitty jump, but the water slowed her reaction to a slightly faster than normal shrug.

  “Where should we go?” Penny signed.

  Kitty assumed she wasn’t asking where she and Elaine should go, but where the three of them should go. “It looks really busy over there.” It felt odd to sign in the water, like talking with a mouthful of mashed potatoes. Kitty glanced back at the boat. She wanted to explore farther afield, but not in that direction.

  “Let’s go around the boat, and then toward the shore.” Elaine was surprisingly graceful underwater. They both were. Kitty wondered if that was how she looked. She’d always felt more clumsy in a dive suit, and attached to a breathing apparatus, but perhaps the reality was much different.

  Kitty agreed and they all set off around the boat, giving it forty feet of clearance. Of course the motor was off, but you could never be too careful. Kitty didn’t want to remember the part of the instruction where Coleman had detailed the different accidents that had happened when an oblivious boat owner had encroached on a diver’s personal space.

  As they started toward the reef, Kitty could see why Punta Molas was famous, even without the rumor of treasure. The reef teemed with fish and sea creatures, the sunlight filtered through the water onto white sand in a mesmerizing pattern, and the ocean that stretched in front of Kitty seemed to be made up of a thousand shades of blue.

  Penny waved to get her attention and pointed at a small, spiderlike creature. It was only a few inches long and didn’t seem to have a head or discernable eyes. “Yellowline arrow crab,” she finger spelled.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Kitty signed back. “Is it dangerous?”

  “No, just ugly. Looks like an overgrown spider, right?”

  Elaine put up a hand, and Kitty and Penny drifted to a halt again. They crowded closer, trying to see what she was showing them. All Kitty could see was a bright yellow blog attached to the top of the reef.

  “Longlure Frogfish.” Elaine pointed to another close by. “They dangle out a little lure and when some curious fish comes by, they snap it up whole.”

  “How do you two know so much about this?”

  “We bought a book.” Kitty thought she could see Elaine roll her eyes a little behind her mask. She was right. For a woman who owned a bookstore, Kitty hadn’t prepared for the trip very well at all. She’d seen so many beautiful creatures but didn’t know anything about them.

  As they swam farther into the reef, the walls grew higher. Kitty glimpsed another diver near the edge of the reef taking photos of an octopus camouflaged against the seafloor. He was using a closed unit, his exhalations going back into the tank to be mixed again with the oxygen. Kitty knew that most photographers used closed systems to keep the bubbles from interfering with their pictures. Motioning to Penny and Elaine, Kitty pointed away from the other diver. No reason to butt into his area with their mountains of bubbles.

  In the other direction, the reef was so large that there were spaces large enough for the three of them to swim through side-by-side and still not touch the walls. Kitty looked up, amazed at how the light had changed when they moved into the crevice.

  “Like the Grand Canyon, but underwater,” Elaine signed.

  “But in miniature,” Penny said.

  “And made out of coral.” It was hard to laugh around a mouthpiece and Kitty worked on keeping a straight face. Maybe joking around underwater wasn’t such a good idea after all.

  “I think we’ll find squirrel fish in here.” Penny pointed toward the dark areas in the coral.

  Kitty wondered if she’d misunderstood the sign but a moment later, Elaine pointed toward a little striped fish with unnaturally large eyes. “Squirrel fish,” Elaine said. “On our list. You can only see them in the night dives, or in the dark areas.”

  Kitty was starting to feel as if she were the only person without a list. She tried to remember some of the pictures on the boat walls. There were anemones, clownfish, stingrays… There was so much to see and so many names to remember. Kitty focused on the coral walls as she kicked herself further along the sandy bed that stretched into the reef. Bright anemone tentacles waved in the air as she passed. Kitty resisted running a finger along them to see the anemone contract under the false hope of food. Always better to look but not touch. Kitty wasn’t one of those people that needed to handle everything, but underwater she had to fight the urge, like a child in a toy store.

  A large gap in the reef looked promising to explore. Golden-colored fan coral waved gently in the ocean currents and a row of neon pink sea sponges lined the bottom edge l
ike safety lights. A large brain coral grew out of the wall, the design looking eerily like the human organ. In a flurry of bubbles and motion, a group of electric-blue fish burst from their hiding spot and Kitty backpedaled away, panicking. They surrounded her for several seconds as they searched for the way out, away from the black-suited intruder.

  Just fish. Kitty closed her eyes, willing her heart rate to return to normal. If she kept scaring herself, she was going to use up all her oxygen and have to return to the boat.

  The sunlight filtered down into the water, flashing like a strobe light on the rocky outcropping. Glancing back, she didn’t see Penny or Elaine. They must have moved on without her. She would just take a peek and then go back out the way she’d come in. A whisper of doubt passed through her. Maybe she didn’t know the way back. Maybe she’d be stuck in the reefs forever, squeezing through cracks in the walls and following sandy paths to dead ends. Or, at least, until she ran out of oxygen.

  Kitty rolled her eyes at her overactive imagination and lack of reasoning skills. If she lost her way, she could simply resurface and look for the boat.

  A movement caught her attention and she focused on a slight bump in the sand. Maybe she’d found the electric ray Ren wanted. Cautiously moving closer, Kitty turned sideways to squeeze around an outcropping of giant anemones. She couldn’t help staring at the tubers as she floated by, noting the tiny fish resting inside, happy as could be with their poisonous home.

  She crept closer, squinting at the ray-shaped outline. She didn’t want to touch it. Two hundred and twenty volts didn’t feel good at any time. Underwater and attached to scuba gear might possibly be the worst.

  Holding her place above the sandy area, Kitty leaned down and waved a hand over the shape. She couldn’t tell if it was a camouflaged fish, or the sea bed. She supposed that was the point of camouflage, but it was usually easier to find an outline or shadow. Pulling out a small waterproof penlight she kept in her scuba belt, she flicked it on and shone it directly at the sandy bump.