“Well, anyway,” Rachel gulped the scotch, “there is something else I wanted to get your ear on while you’re here. Arlen Burkhart is coming to the kickoff celebration.”
Tamara’s throat tightened. Without thinking, she almost slouched into the couch, but she forced herself to sit up straight, to ignore the cold hand slipping around her neck.
“He is?” she asked. “Well, that’s good. Isn’t it?”
“That largely depends on your definition of good.” Rachel sucked down the last of the scotch in her glass, then got up from the sectional and went back to the bottle on her desk. “He’s flying in tomorrow.”
“Maybe he wants a little vacation time. He enjoyed himself at the investors’ weekend in St. Croix a couple months ago,” Tamara said. “We want to keep our investors happy.”
“We’ll just have to make sure none of the policemen we’re hiring get any funny ideas,” Rachel answered.
“I thought they wouldn’t mess with us,” Tamara said.
Rachel raised an eyebrow and poured more into her glass. “Everyone has their limit.”
“Why would the police want him? Did he do something on St. Croix? Or did he get in trouble at home?” Tamara turned her head. “Is that why Mr. Burkhart is coming here?”
“No, nothing like that,” Rachel said. “At least nothing I’m aware of, though it’s not like he comes crying to me when he’s in trouble. I’m not into that kind of life. As far as I can tell, he wants a couple days to sit in with the board and to inspect the new campus before it opens. He said he wants to offer his management counsel—whatever in God’s name that means.” She took another swig of scotch.
The cold air in the room suddenly had a deeper bite. Tamara picked up her glass and took a swig as well.
“Does he think we’re heading in a bad direction?” she asked Rachel. “Our returns have been through the roof since the new campus announcement, and once we’ve got it up and running, our new Orphaned Drugs Research Division should bring us phenomenal growth.”
“He’d be crazy to mess with the golden goose, but then there are all those rumors that make him seem pretty damn crazy.” Rachel shrugged. “He’s a whale investor. They’re high maintenance. He just wants to throw his big, fat tail around to stir up all the smaller fish. The man owns two percent of Hildon, so we’re going to let him.”
If he wanted to see the new campus, the responsibility would fall on Tamara—she knew that. She’d be his main point of contact, the walking encyclopedia to answer any and all questions, from what kinds of flowers they’d have growing out by the sign at the entrance to the types of antimicrobial material coating they’d use in the labs.
And she knew it all. “I’m prepared for that,” Tamara said. “Send him my way.”
“You know I will,” Rachel answered with a smile. “But I want to make one thing clear with you, before you spend time entertaining Mr. Burkhart: all those rumors about him are only rumors.” Her expression turned serious. “He’s never been proven guilty of anything. But if you catch something concrete, bring it to me. Immediately.”
“I will, Rachel.”
After our night with Nels, DJ and I headed back to Reel Fun with an extra guest. Not Nels, who shambled back to his boat around midnight, but our cute waitress, Beth. Even I couldn’t deny DJ’s ability to charm.
On the voyage to Long Bay—east on the coast from Krum Bay—I stayed down in the cockpit while he let Beth steer Reel Fun from his lap. Within an hour, DJ motored into the marina where I kept my catamaran, Wayward. I told him he could stay in the slip adjacent to Wayward, since I’d leased it as well.
From there, I took a short walk up the pier, then onto Frenchman Bay Road, where I fell into bed next to my wife, Alicia.
In what felt like an instant, I awoke to sunlight and the sound of laughter from the kitchen. DJ’s and Alicia’s.
And Beth’s.
DJ really brought his one night stand to my house.
Beth seemed like a nice girl, but I didn’t want strangers poking around my place.
I grumbled and checked the time on my phone—9:17 a.m.
Dammit! The VA had been open for over an hour.
I rolled out of bed and headed into the master bath to wash the bar stink off me.
Fifteen minutes later, I came out of my room, dressed in a pair of dark blue jeans and a gray golf shirt emblazoned with Newport Beach PD Memorial Day Cookout on the pocket. I’d picked it for a reason—if she were up to anything, I wanted her to know she was dealing with a cop.
Past the end of the hall, I saw Beth’s profile. She sat on the nearest bar stool, her back hunched over, her hands in her lap, and wearing a hoodie that had to belong to DJ. “Hey, Dep, is that you I hear lurking in the hallway?” DJ called from the kitchen. “You don’t hafta be shy, my friend. Come on out and say good morning to the ladies!”
Alicia giggled, which got my blood pumping. I didn’t understand why she always laughed at DJ’s inane comments—especially the ones about me.
I came marching out of the mouth of the hall. All three of them were at the breakfast bar, which was a chest-high bar top between the kitchen and living room.
Alicia leaned against the counter on the kitchen side, holding a mug of coffee. She looked as sweet as she ever had in her lavender bath robe, hip cocked to one side, blond hair resting on her near shoulder. She’d say she was messy and unpresentable to company. I’d say she was cute beyond belief.
DJ leaned on his elbows on the far end of the bar, grinning at me. He noticed me checking out my wife. I walked around him, opened the cabinet, and took out a coffee cup.
“Morning, everyone,” I said, as I carried my cup across the kitchen toward Alicia and the coffeemaker.
I planted a kiss on my wife’s forehead.
“DJ said you two closed down the bars last night.” She took a sip of her coffee, trying to hide her grin.
“That’s a technicality,” I said. “More like a person of interest closed down one bar, and we were there with him.”
DJ threw his head back and laughed. Coffee dripped down the side of his mug.
“Man, they musta beaten the fun out of you at the police academy—the man can’t even admit when he had a fun night out.” He turned his attention from Alicia to me. “But I know I saw you smiling once or twice when you were talking to old Nels, buddy. He might look rough, but surely the man knows how to have a good time.”
“Surely he does,” Beth said, her eyes going wide, as if there was more to the story than any of us knew.
“Sounds like somebody else I know.” Alicia’s eyes settled on DJ.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with a man enjoying himself now and again,” he protested. “Took me a long time to figure that out. Believe it or not, I used to be as uptight about everything as my man, Dep—” He stopped himself, averting his eyes from me, and took a sip from his coffee.
His jabs were getting on my nerves, but it was too early in the day to verbally spar with DJ. So, I decided to let it slide. I stayed posted next to Alicia, enjoying a hot cup of black coffee.
She elbowed me, but I didn’t react.
“It’s true,” DJ continued, “I used to be a very regimented person. Up at oh-six-hundred, haircut every weekend, the next day’s clothes laid across my footlocker each night. Every detail accounted for, every decision by the book, every day predictable and planned from the minute I lifted my head from the pillow to when I pulled my blankets over me and turned out the light. I was as flat and crisp as a pair of ironed socks.”
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who had trouble squaring that version of DJ Martin with the man I saw before me. I looked across the bar at Beth furrowing her brow. It was hard to imagine him being one of the guys at the very pointy tip of the spear of American military muscle.
“That must’ve been quite an eyeful,” Beth said. She pinched a lock of his hair, pulling it away from his face. “I could almost picture a respectable young man under all this mess. A
nd under that man, a wild party boy who loved to play with girls’ hearts.”
“Truth be told, I kept myself in lockstep. If I didn’t, I’d have had some butter-bar second lieutenant chomping my ear off about why I was three minutes late to morning PT for all that mattered.” He shrugged. “The Taliban might’ve blown my leg off, but they knocked the stick out of my ass too.”
I didn’t quite know what to make of that, and from the perplexed looks of the two women, they didn’t either. Was it a joke? Did he want our sympathy? It was difficult to comprehend how a man losing his leg could think of that as a good thing.
My eyes wandered up to the clock above the bar. It was 9:38.
I gulped down a mouthful of hot coffee. “The VA opened at eight this morning.” The coffee burned my throat, but I didn’t care. “We need to double-time it over to Charlotte Amalie.”
“You need a ride home?” DJ asked Beth, making eyes with her. “Ain’t got a car to take you anywhere, but Reel Fun can get you to any side of the island without a problem.”
She smiled at him. “You’re sweet, DJ, but I can get a ride all on my own. I don’t need you to trouble yourself if you’ve got a job to do. I’ll call my sister to come get me.”
He smiled back at her. “You’re just a peach, ain’t ya? But you don’t need to bother her. I’ll get you home.”
“DJ,” I said, “we really need to get out to the VA.”
If that Marc guy was hanging around like Nels said, we needed to talk to him as soon as possible. Leads didn’t stay warm for long, and he could have already been there and left. We knew nothing about what treatment he got there or how often.
“I appreciate you,” Beth said to DJ. “But you have work to do, and you better get to it. Don’t keep things held up for me. I’ll call my sister, then walk down to the marina and wait for her.”
One problem taken care of, I thought. At least I wouldn’t have to leave Alicia here alone with Beth.
“You don’t have to do that,” Alicia said. “We’ve got plenty of coffee to drink—I’d never finish this whole pot on my own.” She waved a hand at the coffee maker, which was only a quarter full. I’d seen her drink more than that in a single morning. “We can sit out on the porch while your sister is on her way over.”
“I wouldn’t want to keep you from your morning.”
“You’re not,” Alicia answered. “I’m always up for good company.” She grinned at DJ. “You couldn’t possibly be as boring as this one-legged pirate.”
“Yaarrgghh!” DJ said. “I resemble that remark.”
If anything, I wished Alicia were right and DJ would take it a little slower.
“We both know you’ll start crying about how much you miss me as soon as I step out that door,” DJ said, pointing toward the sliding glass door overlooking the Caribbean. “I know living with Jerry would have me pulling my hair out every minute of the day.”
I put my coffee mug in the sink and left the kitchen.
“Jerry—” Alicia started to say, but I didn’t stop. I walked toward the deck door, got my shoes on, then laced them up while I sat on the couch with my back to the others.
“Don’t worry about him,” DJ said. “He’s sweating out all the beer from last night. A little sunshine, a little ocean, and a whole lot of chasing down a murderer is gonna get his spirits right back where they should be.”
I rose from the couch and turned toward DJ. He gave me a look that told me he knew he’d crossed the line, but he didn’t care.
“Let’s get going,” I said, heading over to give Alicia a quick kiss.
Then I turned and walked out the back door. By the time I was down the wooden steps leading from the porch, DJ was thumping down from the top.
“Don’t worry about us; we’ve got this job locked down real tight. Everybody’s cool, everything’s gonna be smooth sailing,” he called back to Alicia and Beth. “We’ll be back in time for dinner.”
DJ was right about one thing; getting to work on Luc Baptiste’s murder did have me feeling better. Living on St. Thomas, the sunshine and the briny air were nice perks, but nothing cleared my head like work.
The VA office on St. Thomas sat about a quarter mile inland from Crown Bay, in West Charlotte Amalie, not far from the Yacht Haven Grande Marina in Long Bay.
Reel Fun cruised westward through Long Bay, keeping close to the shoreline, steadily dodging the other craft that seemed to cut every which way around us. DJ guided her through Haulover Cut—a narrow, man-made channel between St. Thomas’s southern shore and the north coast of Hassel Island. I held my breath while reefs closed to within ten yards of us on either side. Hassel was a pretty place—a roughly 140-acre island mostly owned by the Virgin Islands National Park and a handful of private estates, with a rocky shoreline and small stretches of sand beach.
To the west of Hassel, nearer the mouth of Crown Bay, lay Water Island—another high-dollar piece of real estate shared by a hundred or so people. The island’s name told you all you needed to know about its importance in the early days of exploration. Ships from all countries, tradesmen, pirates, privateers, and warships all stopped on Water Island to replenish their stores from the many freshwater ponds located there.
After navigating through Haulover Cut, we continued our westward course, following the contours of the beachhead, the sticky air hissing past our ears and the Bimini hardtop holding off sunlight so bright that looking at Reel Fun’s bow without my sunglasses felt as if I had almost seared my eyes.
Within a few minutes, we were close enough to Crown Bay Marina to see they had a few open spots for day docking. DJ pulled the throttle back to idle, then pushed his hand flat on a piece of the high-gloss, white dash to the right of the boat’s wheel. Like magic, a door rose up, revealing a compartment holding a GPS, start/stop controls for both engines, fuel pump, anchor controls and one of Reel Fun’s two marine radios.
DJ twisted a knob on the smaller VHF radio, then brought the mic to his mouth.
“Crown Bay Marina, this is Reel Fun. Tell me where I can tie up.” His finger let go of the button on the side of the mic. The radio cracked, and a few seconds later, a woman’s voice answered.
“Reel Fun, proceed to VHF 12 for more instructions.”
DJ quickly changed frequencies on the radio. “This is Reel Fun, waiting for somebody to boss me around.”
“This is Darla at Crown Bay Marina, ready to boss you around, skipper. What’re you looking for, Reel Fun?”
“How long you think we’ll be here?” DJ asked me.
I shrugged. “Back by dinner time, right?”
He nodded agreement.
“Just looking for a day slip and about six hundred gallons of diesel,” he said into the radio. “Got something like that?”
“Always do, Reel Fun,” Darla answered. “Go to the first face dock and Glen’ll get you squared away with fuel.”
Reel Fun slowly pressed forward into the marina. Ahead, I saw the low, colorful buildings of Charlotte Amalie West. Off our portside, a familiar-looking sailboat motored out into Crown Bay. I caught the name—Lady Lesley—and remembered emailing back and forth with the owner, Ron, a few times before I found Wayward back in Yacht Haven.
Lady Lesley was a beautiful Tayana 37 that had sailed up and down the eastern seaboard since being commissioned in 1987. According to Ron, she’d spent the last decade shuttling between a rental off Elbow Cay in the Bahamas, and a place down here in St. Thomas.
I saw Ron on deck, working hand-over-hand to unfurl a staysail. I waved and he shielded his eyes from the sun at my back, then smiled and returned my greeting.
“Hey, Dep, quit waving at the neighbors. I need you to hop your ass down to the cockpit and get the lines ready.” DJ spun the wheel, turning the bow to starboard, aiming for a place on the fuel dock behind a converted tugboat.
Why couldn’t I have been partnered with somebody like Ron? A friendly, competent guy. I didn’t have time to dwell on it, though. I dutifully climbed down th
e flybridge ladder and brought the lines out of storage. As soon as I had them out, I looked up at the dock and saw a bow-legged, sun-scorched man who couldn’t have been a day under seventy holding his arms out.
“Toss me a line, son,” the old man called, his arms spread wide like an anhinga drying its wings in the sun. “I’ll get you tied off and filled up.”
“Glen?”
He nodded.
I tossed the line high, trying not to hit him in the face. He ducked a little to the side and caught it over his shoulder with practiced ease.
Glen was as good as his word. He got us tied up, and once DJ opened the fuel door and removed the caps for him, we headed up to the dock office, paid for our day slip and six hundred gallons of diesel, then headed inland. Darla said Glen could pull DJ’s boat forward using the dock lines, so it would be out of the way of the fuel dock.
I couldn’t see how one old man could handle that on his own. Surely, the marina had another dockhand somewhere to help the old guy out.
We walked up a set of concrete steps from the marina office. I heard DJ grunting behind me as he pulled on the rail with each step. The hangover must’ve been roasting him from the inside out, and I doubted he’d gotten much sleep the night before.
Part of me wanted to let him twist in the consequences of his own poor choices, but I couldn’t leave a guy who only had one leg hanging. So, I turned and reached out a hand.
“I’m fine,” he said.
He wasn’t. Sweat glistened across his forehead and his skin would’ve been green if he wasn’t so red. Anyway, I didn’t push it. I left him alone.
I walked up the rest of the steps, then stopped at the top. Ahead of me, I saw roads and traffic and strip malls dressed in colorful, chipped paint. With the drugstore on one corner, the grocery store on another, and a check-cashing place sharing the same building, Charlotte Amalie West looked like any other small town in America, except for the paint.
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