by Junie Coffey
Lance laughed with a sneer. The officer holding Lance searched his captive’s pockets with his free hand, but it wasn’t there. Tiffany was wearing only a T-shirt and underpants, so it was unlikely she had it. Nina was suddenly aware of Ted standing beside her. He and Blue swept the sand with beams of light from their flashlights. Nina retraced Lance’s steps up the beach, trying to imagine how far he might have been able to throw it. Danish grabbed his flashlight out of the sand and disappeared into the woods on the forest track. He reemerged a couple of minutes later with the necklace in his hand. He held it aloft as he walked triumphantly over to Blue and slapped it in his hand. Blue put it in his shirt pocket and buttoned it.
Tiffany seemed to notice Nina’s presence again. “You! Are you some kind of sicko wannabe? Always showing up in the middle of my business? Why don’t you get your own life?” she snarled at Nina.
“Really, Tiffany. Sleeping with the hunky tennis pro? That’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?” asked Nina. “You don’t have much of an imagination, do you?”
“Seriously, bitch. The ruggedly handsome fishing guide? Or is it the strong, silent type in uniform?” asked Tiffany in a needling nasal whine.
Danish nodded his head. “Touché, Nina. She’s got you there.”
“Shut up, Danish,” snapped Nina.
Lance grinned slimily. “Hunky, eh? Thanks, Nancy Drew. I think you’re pretty hot, too, for a more mature woman.”
“Shut up, Lance. I think you’re probably going to prison for extortion, fraud, or something very serious like that. Game over,” said Nina, swinging her backhand.
Blue stepped forward, shaking his head. “OK, OK. We’ll take over from here. Mandy, put them in the boat. Ted, can you take these two home?” Blue glanced at Nina and Danish. “I’m going to be a while.”
“Sure, no problem,” said Ted.
Blue scanned the forest edge with his eyes, then turned to Nina and Danish, his hands on his hips.
“I can’t think offhand what law you may have broken here, but given the unique sequence of events that has transpired, I’d like to hear the full story tomorrow morning, if it suits you. In the meantime, please give me a break and stay out of trouble. Can you do that?”
Nina nodded emphatically.
As they followed Ted to his boat, Danish paused in front of Blue. “Did you see all that, Blue? Top-grade nephew-in-law material right here.” He thumped himself on the chest twice and walked out into the surf.
Blue seemed to hesitate for a moment. He looked first at Danish and then at Nina. “I would be remiss if I didn’t thank you for alerting us to the location of the suspects. I can’t endorse your methods, but we’ll all be glad to see this case closed. See you in the morning.”
As Danish pushed the boat out and climbed in, Ted held up a set of keys on a miniature foam flip-flop key ring. “These yours?” asked Ted. “I found them on the municipal dock.”
“Oh. Thank you,” said Nina, pocketing them. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what are you doing here? After dark in the cays?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” he said. “I saw you hauling explosives down to the dock this afternoon, then taking off by yourself in a boat less than an hour before sundown. I apologize for following you, but I was concerned. Explosives aside, you haven’t been here very long, and you don’t know these waters. I turned the truck around and followed you. It wasn’t hard to find you, what with the fireworks and all. Blue arrived at the same time. He was already here in the cays, down by Wreath Cay. He bombed back up here like a bat out of hell when Danish radioed him.”
“Are you two done with your little tête-à-tête over there?” called Danish from the boat. “I’d like to get back and give Alice the good news.”
They drove home slowly in the dark, with the lights on and Ted’s fishing sonar beeping out the changes in bottom depth. He kept to the channel, the lights on the red-and-green markers glowing in the night. They let Danish off at the Plantation Inn, tying up at the hotel dock this time. It was lit with tiki torches running in pairs up to the lawn of the inn. People sometimes boated the short distance up the shore from the marina for dinner. The inn glowed invitingly in the dark, and laughter floated down from the veranda, where people had gathered for predinner drinks. Here in Coconut Cove, the evening was unfolding in a civilized manner.
Ted maneuvered the boat away from the inn, and they hummed along in silence until he beached it below the fishing lodge, pulling the motor up and tying the boat up to a fallen tree trunk for the night.
He turned to Nina. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink about now. Do you want to come up for a glass of wine?” he asked.
“Sure, that sounds good,” said Nina. She was coated in dried sweat and sea salt, but she was very curious to see where he lived, and she wasn’t ready to call it a night just yet. Adrenaline was still humming in her veins. Ted went ahead of her up the path, lighting the way with his flashlight. Through the tangle of trees and shrubs lining the path, she could see cabins on both sides facing the beach, warm yellow rectangles of light filling the windows. There was movement behind the curtains in one cabin. Nina surmised the guests were dressing for dinner.
“Fortress Matthews,” she said under her breath.
“Pardon?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
They emerged at the edge of a narrow band of grass surrounding the main lodge. A short flagstone path led to a wraparound veranda. Ted took the stairs two at a time and held the screen door open for her. The interior was a large, open club room furnished with comfortable cushioned chairs and sofas grouped in front of a stone fireplace and along the walls. There were windows all the way around, except on the back wall, where there was a bar. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all varnished hardwood, stained a warm brown. There were low bookshelves under the windows filled with novels and field guides. Along one wall, a long table had been set for dinner with a dozen places.
“It’s beautiful,” said Nina.
“Thanks,” said Ted, looking around. Nina could tell he was proud of it.
A woman in her midfifties wearing a khaki golf shirt with Matthews Bonefish Lodge embroidered on the sleeve emerged from the door behind the bar.
“Ted! There you are. Where have you been? Our special guests are arriving at the airport in an hour and a half. I was getting worried,” she said.
“Hi, Cheryl. Don’t worry. Everything’s under control. I’ll head out to pick them up shortly. Cheryl, this is Nina Spark, our next-door neighbor. Nina, may I introduce Cheryl Wilson, the brains of the operation,” said Ted.
Cheryl looked at Nina with curiosity for a millisecond, then smiled and held out her hand. “How do you do, Nina. Pleased to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Nina, shaking her hand and smiling back at her.
“Can I get you anything before you go, Ted?” asked Cheryl.
“No, thanks, we’re fine,” he said, striding over to the bar and reaching over the polished mahogany top to grab a bottle of red wine, an opener, and two glasses. “I’m going up the hill for a breather before I go. See you shortly.” He held the door open for Nina again.
Cheryl now looked at her with open curiosity, a smile playing on her lips as the screen door slapped shut behind them.
“I thought we might get a few minutes of peace up here,” said Ted, looking back at Nina over his shoulder as he started up a path through another grove of dense green vegetation. “The guests will be starting dinner in the lodge soon.”
The short path through the trees brought them to a clapboard cabin, a little bigger than the guest cottages on the beach. It was perched above the lodge, and it looked down over a short, gentle slope onto the rest of the camp. A covered veranda ran across the front. Behind the cabin was nothing but dense dark-green vegetation. It was very private, hidden from below by the grove of trees.
“My sanctuary,” said Ted, leading the way up onto the veranda. “You can’t see it in th
e dark, but the view is something else. I can even see your little yellow cottage from here,” he said, looking at her and smiling. The sky was strewn with layers of brilliant white stars. Ted set the wine, opener, and glasses on a weathered wooden crate, pulled up a chair for her, and patted the back of it. She sank into it while he pulled a matchbox from his pocket and lit a candle made from a coconut shell and set it on the crate. He sat down beside her and opened the wine. Then he handed her a glass and held up the other.
“To the end of the Tiffany Bassett affair,” he said.
“I’ll drink to that,” said Nina.
They raised their glasses to the stars and sipped the wine.
“You certainly live up to your name, Nina Spark,” he said. “There has been hardly a dull moment since you moved in next door. Rose used to call me to chase her ill-natured cat out from under her veranda every once in a while, but that’s about it. Then she’d feed me milk and cookies and give me what she called a pep talk.”
Nina thought about what Danish had told her about Miss Rose her first day on Pineapple Cay. She wondered what kind of love advice Miss Rose had offered Ted during her kitchen-table pep talks.
“What kind of pep talk?” she asked.
He glanced over at her, then looked down at the lodge with its cozy golden glow. “Oh, you know, she was very concerned with everyone’s welfare and happiness, and she had pretty strong opinions on what constituted a good life . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked over at Nina again.
“She used to cut out articles from Oprah’s magazine and flag me down as I was driving by so she could give them to me. I can’t remember the particulars, although I did glance at a few over breakfast, because she’d quiz me about them when I saw her. The phrase work-life balance sticks in my mind. She once gave me a very detailed article on decluttering your closets because she said my truck was a mess. If you don’t mind me saying, it’s sort of terrifying to think that a good portion of the women in the English-speaking world are walking around armed with the kind of knowledge they gleaned from that magazine. Kind of makes a man feel unprepared.”
“Well, I don’t have a cat, and my cooking is probably not up to Miss Rose’s caliber, but if you come by and help me hang my shutters someday, as per our arrangement, I’ll bake you some cookies. Spark secret recipe,” she said.
He smiled again. “Sounds good. That was quite a fireworks display. Did you do that?” he asked.
She told him about the family business and the summers and fall weekends she’d spent traveling with her father and her brothers to state fairs and festivals throughout New England. “I’ll have you know that I designed the display the night Miss Whole Milk Cheese was crowned in Swiss Falls, Vermont,” she said.
“So, what are you going to do now that there are no dangerous criminals to chase on Pineapple Cay?” he asked, glancing over at her and then back out at the star-filled sky.
“I’m going to fix up my lovely little house, plant a garden, and get back to work. This has been one exhausting two-week-long vacation. But I must admit, today was sort of exhilarating. And I’ve met a lot of nice people. I like it here,” she said.
He smiled, and then they were both quiet again, looking out at the star-studded sky and listening to the breeze rustling in the leaves of the trees.
“I was married once,” he said, breaking the silence. “We met at college in Asheville and moved down to Key West after graduation, thinking we’d start there. She was an artist. Still is. It took us five years to figure out that while we were both aiming at getting far enough ahead so that we could explore the world beyond Key West, she was aiming at New York or Paris, and I was yearning for the middle of nowhere. It happens. She’s happier now, and so am I.”
Nina didn’t say anything. So, he knew about Darren. Well, who didn’t? After a few moments, Ted set his glass on the table and stood up.
“I would much rather stay here enjoying the night air with you, but I’ve got a special charter coming in less than an hour. Let me walk you home. You must be tired after wrestling criminals to the ground today,” he said.
“Thanks for the wine. This is a lovely spot. Now I’ll have a picture of it when I imagine you talking about the one that got away at dinner, and then sitting out here watching the sun set from your hilltop aerie, cleaning your fishing pole or something,” said Nina.
He looked in her eyes with a small smile on his lips, but he didn’t say anything.
She stood, and they walked down the hill to the beach and along the surf to her cottage. It was only about eight o’clock, but it felt much later. She was looking forward to a long, hot shower and then bed. At the foot of the stairs to her veranda, they stood facing each other.
“Well, I’d better get back to the lodge and make sure things are organized,” said Ted.
He seemed to hesitate for a moment. He turned to look out at the dark water and then turned back to Nina. “I’m headed down into the cays for a few days, taking some clients on a camping fishing trip in a remote part of the chain. Maybe when I get back you’ll let me take you out to dinner?”
She realized she’d been half hoping he would do this—and half hoping he wouldn’t. She needed to catch her breath. One the other hand, the idea was not unpleasant. She almost asked him if it was her borderline criminal behavior that prompted his invitation. But she didn’t.
“That would be very nice,” she said.
“Great,” he said, and smiled. “I’ll give you a call when I get back.” He turned away with his hands in his pockets and started back up the beach to his place.
He’d only gone a few steps when he stopped, stood still for a second, then turned around and walked back to where she was still standing, watching him. He looked deeply into her eyes, and then he lifted her chin gently with one hand, bent down, and kissed her tenderly on the mouth. His lips were soft and warm. She kissed him back. She felt his other hand rest lightly on her hip, then slide around to the small of her back and pull her to him. It was a long, intense kiss. She felt her knees buckle slightly. He held her up with both arms and pulled his head back to look at her. Mr. Nice Guy had suddenly transformed into Mr. Extremely Dangerous and Highly Flammable. He closed his eyes and bent down to kiss her neck. She wrapped her arms around him tightly. She could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and her own, too. Finally, he pulled away and rested his forehead against hers, breathing hard, still holding her in his arms.
“I have wanted to do that for a long time,” he whispered.
She couldn’t resist making a joke. “You mean, ever since we met eleven days ago?” she whispered back.
“Actually, I think it was when you hooked that fish. Nothing is more erotic than a woman reeling in a fish,” he said.
She wasn’t sure he was joking.
He kissed her again. “Mmm. Lightly salted Nina Spark. Delicious,” he said. “For the first time in my life, I don’t want to go to work. Tonight of all nights.”
Her brain was hormone-addled, and her limbs were rubbery. It was beyond her ability to reply. She licked her lips. He stroked her side gently, then kissed her once more, softly, and let her go. She leaned against the veranda post and looked up at him. He looked down into her eyes but didn’t touch her.
He sighed deeply. “I’ve got to go. Stay out of trouble. I’ll be back on Friday. We have a date, don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” she murmured.
He smiled and turned away. “Don’t blow up my lodge while I’m gone, eh?” he said without turning around.
In a daze, Nina let herself into the cottage and had a long, hot shower. She dressed in clean clothes, pulling her soft wool sweater on over top. About an hour later, she happened to glance out the window of her bedroom and saw Ted’s Jeep go by, heading in the direction of his lodge. In the front passenger seat was a man looking straight ahead. Nina thought his profile looked very familiar. A woman and two girls were in the backseat. They were in shadow in the dim light from the street lamp. B
ehind Ted’s Jeep was the shiny black SUV with dark windows and license plates from the main island.
She called Pansy, who said she’d be over later, ate a salad, and then mixed a pitcher of iced tea and took a glass out to the veranda. It was a warm night. She lit a pillar candle and set it down on the edge of the deck. She heard the front door open, and Danish called out a hello. He pushed open the screen door onto the veranda a moment later, a glass of iced tea in his hand.
“Well, I had a shower and went over to Aunt Agatha’s house and had a glass of lemonade while I gave Alice the news that we had recovered the emerald for her. I think it went well. Her aunt offered me a digestive biscuit halfway through the visit,” he said.
“Danish,” said Nina, “is it possible that I saw the president of the United States and his family in Ted’s Jeep a half hour ago?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Ted’s had a few former presidents over there. Politicians are big-time fishermen, I would say. A few movie stars, too. Not too many musicians, I don’t think. I wonder why. Mostly doctors, lawyers, businessmen. A few women fishermen, too. Some serious hard-core ones with all the gear.”
“Well, that would explain the men in mirrored shades in the black SUV we saw around town over the past few days. They weren’t criminals hired to help Barry Bassett! They must be Secret Service agents doing a security check before the president arrived!” said Nina.
They heard a tap on the door. Danish jumped up to let Pansy in.
“Oh, you guys. I can’t believe it! You did it! I was on pins and needles, looking out the window every five seconds until I saw the police boat come back,” she said. She fell into the chair next to Nina. “So, tell me what happened!”
Nina and Danish filled her in.
“I love fireworks,” said Pansy. “We watched the show after the barbecue. It was great, but I wish I’d seen yours.”
“I’ll create a display just for you sometime,” said Nina. “On your birthday.”
Pansy smiled and clapped her hands.
“So, who won the treasure hunt?” asked Nina.