Without a Grave

by Marcia Talley

  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 Jaim
e 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.

  SIXTEEN

  DRUGS ARE AN ABSOLUTE NO-NO IN THE BAHAMAS. THE PENALTIES FOR POSSESSION AND USE OF ILLEGAL DRUGS ARE SEVERE. IT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE THAT YOU ARE A FOREIGN CITIZEN, AND PRISON SENTENCES CAN BE LONG.

  Dold, Vaitilingam and Folster, Bahamas: Includes

  Turks and Caicos, Rough Guides, 2003, p. 41

  ‘Do I have to go home?’ I lay in Molly’s hammock, swaying gently. The evening breeze had freshened, but I found it a welcome relief from the heat of the day.

  Molly sat nearby, leaning back in her chair with her feet propped against the porch rail. ‘Stay as long as you want, sugar.’

  We watched in companionable silence as the lights of Hawksbill settlement twinkled out one by one. Nine o’clock was bedtime across the channel, and it usually was at our house, too, unless a good DVD was on the agenda. ‘I’m not very sleepy,’ I confessed.

  ‘Probably the chocolate,’ Molly said. I heard paper rustling, then a snap. ‘Here, have another one.’

  There are no finer comfort foods than Vosges exotic candy bars. I accepted the square of Oaxaca that Molly handed me and popped it into my mouth, savoring the intoxicating blend of dark chocolate and chilies that set my tongue a-tingling. ‘What do we do when these are gone?’

  ‘I’ve got a Goji and a Bacon Bar,’ she mumbled around a mouth full of chocolate. ‘After that, it’s Cadbury.’

  ‘How we suffer.’

  ‘Pitiful.’

  After the chocolate was gone, I got up to go. ‘Thanks for everything, Molly. I don’t know why these things always happen to me when Paul is away.’

  ‘Finding bodies?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘It’s happened before?’

  ‘I’m the Jessica Fletcher of Annapolis. It’s a curse.’

  Molly snorted. ‘You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.’ She handed me my flashlight. ‘But it’s late. Have you reached Paul?’

  ‘No. He’s still in transit, but I left a message.’ I gave her a hug. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without you today.’

  ‘Walk me to the generator, then. The noise is driving me crazy.’

  Illuminating the path with my flashlight, I accompanied Molly to the generator shed where she shut off the engine for the evening. ‘Well, goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Hannah. I hope you sleep well. And if you feel like it, come over for coffee during the Cruisers’ Net in the morning. I’ll crank up the generator at eight if the power doesn’t come back on its own.’

  I smiled into the dark, thinking about my coffee pot, no better than a doorstop without electricity. ‘Count on it.’

  My flashlight barely penetrated the darkness beyond the path as I stumbled along the rocks going home. I hadn’t left a candle burning, so Windswept was dark as pitch against an even darker sky strewn with bright, cold stars. There was no moon.

  Once in my bedroom, I found a candle and lit it, filling the room with a shimmering, golden light. I put on my nightshirt, brushed the taste of chocolate out of my mouth, and lay down in bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I tried to read, but the light from the guttering candle made my eyes ache.

  ‘Screw it!’ I said out loud. I hauled the blanket off the bed, wrapped it around my shoulders, and stomped outside to sit on the porch.

  Night sounds surrounded me. The clack-clack-clack of hermit crabs scrabbling through the bushes, the wheep-wheep of a nighthawk, the ooh-wah-hoo-o-o of a mourning dove who apparently couldn’t sleep either.

  Something startled a bird, and he flapped his way out of the trees. I squinted into the dark trying to see where it’d gone, when a moving light caught my eye. Hawksbill settlement was unusually dark, its generators, like ours, silenced for the night. Yet someone was moving around over there.

  As I stared at the light, it divided, became two. Two became three, flittering like fireflies in the vicinity of the pier at the Tamarind Tree Resort. I wondered if the boys were skinny dipping and I shuddered. Don’t go swimming at night. That’s when the big fish come in to feed. A grizzled live-aboard had given me that advice one languid afternoon at Pete’s Pub in Little Harbour. But the big fish come by day, too, especially if you chum the water.

  Still wearing the blanket, I went in search of the binoculars. Where had I put the damn things? Clutching the doorframe with one hand, I bumbled into the kitchen, ran my hands along the counter, the refrigerator, the table, another counter. I found the binoculars where I’d left them, next to the radio.

  Thinking I should have laid a trail of breadcrumbs, it took me a minute or two to retrace my steps. When I got back to the porch, I put the binoculars to my eyes and stared across the harbor. There were more lights now. With magnification I could see three distinct lights that I figured were flashlights, and two other bright beams that could have been the headlights on a golf cart.

  A light flashed, went out, flashed again. This time, it was near the end of the pier. Somebody was going swimming tonight. I squinted and diddled with the focus dial on the binoculars. No, two somebodies. An individual standing on the pier shone a light on the ladder as two swimmers, first one and then the other, climbed into the water. Meanwhile, lights wavered and jiggled as people moved up and down the beach.

  Some sort of party? If so, where was the music?

  With the binoculars trained on one line of lights, I ended up looking at the runway again. More lights on, then off, as the golf cart turned and drove away.

  A chilling thought: Was I witnessing what Frank and Sally had observed on another moonless night?

  I wondered if the view would be better from Molly’s porch, and whether she was still awake.

  I fumbled my way into the bedroom, picked my shorts up off the floor, and pulled them on under my nightshirt. I slipped into my Crocs and collected my flashlight. I crashed around the bedroom until I found my iPhone where I’d left it on the bedside table, hoping for a call from Paul, and stuck it in my pocket.

  I could have awakened the dead with all the noise I made thrashing through the un
derbrush, but since Molly and I were the only residents at present, it didn’t seem to matter.

  At Molly’s cottage, a single light still burned in her bedroom window. I stood on the sand under it, a hand of thatch palm tickling my chin. ‘Molly!’

  Molly’s worried face appeared like a Halloween mask in the window. ‘Hannah! What the heck are you doing out there?’

  ‘Come out on your porch. There’s something going on at the Tamarind Tree Resort that I think you need to see.’

  While Molly slipped into a bathrobe, I walked around her house and climbed the steps on to her porch. By the time her glass doors slid open, I was already checking out the activity across the way. ‘There’s more lights, now,’ I whispered. ‘I think they’re lining them up along the runway.’ I turned to my friend in the dark. ‘Crazy bastards are going to land a plane! I’d bet my IRA on it!’

  Molly carried binoculars, too. ‘Something similar was going on a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn’t as clear an evening then. The only thing I was sure of was the plane landing. That was hard to miss.’

  ‘A couple of weeks ago? When was that exactly?’

  ‘About the time . . .’ she gasped. ‘Oh, Hannah, how can I have been so dense? This must have been what Frank Parker saw!’ She laid the binoculars in her lap. ‘It’s got to be drugs. Why else would you try to land an airplane in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Like dropping an elephant on a postage stamp.’

  ‘And why tonight?’ she continued, raising the binoculars to her eyes for another look.

  ‘I think that’s easy.’ I picked up my iPhone, brought up the screen, and flicked open the moon phase web application. I tapped in the date. The crescent moon would appear tomorrow. And twenty-eight days ago, on August 1 . . .

  I rotated the display so Molly could see it. ‘No moon. A good night to be out if you’re up to mischief. You can’t see Poinciana Cove from Hawksbill settlement, and they probably think nobody’s at home over here. The power being out is a bonus. You can count on most people sticking close to home, at least until the power comes back on.’