Rising Storm: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 11)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “We’d best get back to the house,” I said to Finn, as I started walking toward the water.

  He followed and we began swimming again, angling toward the nearer south pier instead of the floating pier on the north side of the island. Soon we swam across the small channel I’d dredged to the house, and I waited by the ladder at the end of the pier. Finn hadn’t quite figured out the ladder—he needed a little help with it still—but there was a small ramp on the north pier that he used to come and go with ease.

  The approaching boat was getting closer, but still hadn’t reached the deeper water of Harbor Channel, this side of Howe Key. We didn’t get many visitors on the island, and I knew the engine sound of those that came out regularly. This wasn’t one of them.

  Hearing footsteps, I turned around and saw Carl coming down the steps from my deck. Carl Trent and his wife Charlie, along with their two kids, lived on the island and took care of things. Charlie had taken the kids and gone shopping for the day—and besides, even she didn’t come up through the shallows at low tide.

  Carl joined me and Finn at the end of the dock. “Didn’t know we had visitors coming.”

  “None that I know of.” I turned back toward the sound of the approaching boat. It wasn’t going dead slow, but it wasn’t trying to barrel through, either. Whoever was driving at least knew enough to go slow.

  “Small outboard,” Carl said. “Real small.”

  The boat came into view as it passed the tip of Howe Key into deeper water.

  “That’s Montrose’s boat,” Carl said. “Who got it when he died?”

  “His granddaughter,” I replied, recognizing a woman’s blond hair under a ball cap. “Denise Montrose.”

  A few minutes later, the girl turned into my channel and idled toward us. She expertly turned toward the pier, and when the boat responded she shifted to reverse and brought it to a stop right next to us.

  “Hey, Mister McDermitt,” she said, as I put a hand on the high bow to steady the boat. “I’m sorry to come out here unannounced.”

  “Good to see you, Miss Montrose,” I replied. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine.” She stood up in the little homemade boat. “I wonder if I could talk to you about something?”

  I offered a hand and she took it, stepping up onto the pier, where I helped her tie off the little boat. “This is my friend, Carl,” I said, once the boat was fast. “He knew your grandfather, too.”

  They shook hands and Carl said he had some work to do in the garden, then disappeared up the steps.

  “Come up to the deck,” I said. “We can get out of the sun.”

  I asked if she wanted something to drink, but she declined, so I excused myself and went inside to put on a shirt. When I returned, we sat in a pair of rockers in the shade of a gumbo-limbo tree.

  “I thought you said you didn’t know your way around out here,” I said, trying to break the ice.

  Just a few weeks ago, I’d held her grandfather as he died, the victim of a crazed serial killer. Just last week, my daughter and I had taken the young woman out to the back-country to spread his ashes. She and Kim were a year apart at the University of Florida.

  “Kim mentioned that you lived on Harbor Channel,” she said. “I guess I remember more than I thought. Gramps used to bring me up here fishing. I just followed my instincts and … well, here I am.”

  I looked at her and didn’t speak. I’ve learned over the years that when someone has something to say, it’s best to give them time to organize in their mind what they want to convey.

  “I have a friend who needs help,” she finally blurted out.

  “Help with what?”

  Denise fiddled with her watch. “She sorta had something stolen.”

  “Did she go to the police?”

  “She can’t. It’s kind of a weird story.”

  I studied the girl’s face. She was pretty, but not beautiful. Average height and build, with shoulder-length, dark blond hair, and a wholesome-looking, if unspectacular face. Her blue eyes were bright and intelligent. Just motoring up here alone meant she was either a lunatic or self-assured. I decided it was the latter.

  “I’m not sure how I could help,” I said, offering my most disarming grin. “I’m just a fishing guide with a big boat.”

  She seemed to think on it for a moment. “I was thirteen when I first heard about you, Mister McDermitt. Gramps said that if you did what they said you did, then good riddance, and he hoped you were smart enough not to get caught.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said, though I knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “There have been other things,” she said. “Word gets around. Everyone in the Middle Keys knows who you are and talks about what you’ve done and what you can do.”

  This was news to me. I thought I kept a pretty low profile. I didn’t go down into town often, and when I did it was usually to a little bar that a friend owns.

  “Yeah,” I said, “it’s a small island. And people in small towns tend to exaggerate a lot.”

  “Exaggeration usually has a basis in fact.” Denise nodded over the rail, to where Carl was working in the aquaponics garden. “It’s pretty common knowledge how you helped Angela’s dad.”

  Angela was Carl’s daughter from a first marriage. An energetic and heartfelt young woman, she was always trying to help some lost cause. She and Jimmy, my part-time first mate, lived together on a houseboat in Boot Key Harbor.

  Steering the conversation away from me, I said, “Your friend was robbed?”

  “Sort of,” Denise replied. “Not in the usual sense. She’s a few years older than me and was married to a soldier. He was killed overseas, and she’s going to have a baby soon.”

  “Iraq?” I asked.

  “No, he was in Ecuador when he was killed.”

  “So, why is it you think I can help your friend if she can’t go to the police?”

  Her eyes studied mine again, in that wide-eyed way young people see the world. “I’m not sure you can,” she said. “Or if anyone can. Like I said, it’s kind of a weird treasure story. It’d probably be best if you met with her and let her lay it out.”

  I’d come to the Keys, after retiring from the Marine Corps nine years ago, because I’d always loved it here and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the island lifestyle. I hadn’t come here to be responsible for solving other people’s problems. But the story—and the mention of treasure—got my curiosity up a bit.

  Like most in the Keys, I’ve done a bit of treasure hunting. During the Age of Exploration, the wealth of a whole race of people was taken aboard ships and sent back to Europe—and not all the ships made it. Unlike today, with weather satellites, computer forecast models, and ships that can outrun storms, early mariners were often surprised by the powerful storms that spawn in the tropics, and billions of dollars’ worth of gold, silver, and precious gems had ended up strewn across the sea floor, waiting for someone to find them.

  Though most of my treasure hunts had been profitable ventures—unusual in the treasure salvage business—it was also something I just enjoyed doing. Learning the historical aspect of the hunt was just as pleasing to me as the treasure.

  “Does your friend live here in the Keys?” I asked.

  “Her name’s Amy. Amy Huggins. They were building a house on No Name Key before her husband Dan was killed. She’s still trying to work on it, but she’s nearly out of money. She stays in a little trailer on the property.”

  “What was stolen?”

  “She’s not really certain,” Denise said. “She’s not even a hundred percent sure there was anything to be stolen in the first place.”

  “Wait,” I said. “She’s not sure if anything was stolen, but wants help in finding it? What is it she thinks might have been stolen?”

  “She told me she found something—something hidden in a place that should have held a lot more.”

  Intrigued, but a bit impatient, I asked, “A lot more wha
t, Denise?”

  “She found an emerald.”

  “What was that all about?” Carl asked, after Denise’s little boat puttered south, away from the island.

  I gave him a summary of what Denise had told me, leaving out some of the details, and asked if he’d ever met Amy’s husband.

  “Never knew the kid, personally,” Carl said as we sat at the table on the backside of the deck, overlooking the interior of the island. “Comes from up-island trailer trash, but managed to get into college and make something of himself. He was killed a few months back.”

  “I’m going down to No Name this evening, to meet with the widow. I doubt there’s anything I can do, though.”

  “You gonna stay in town?” Carl asked. “No moon tonight.”

  “Probably,” I replied. “Devon has the day off tomorrow.”

  “Remember, we’re leaving in the morning,” Carl reminded me, for about the tenth time in a week. He and Charlie were taking the kids to his hometown in Louisiana for a week, to visit his family.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “The island will be just fine when you get back.”

  A low buzzing noise grew steadily louder, and we both looked out over the island to the north. Seeing just one person in a single day this far out in the backcountry is rare; two is a very busy day.

  My deck was more than sixteen feet above high water and we could easily see across the low mangroves on the north side of the island.

  “There,” Carl said, pointing.

  I followed his finger and saw a plane, low on the horizon, heading in the general direction of Key West. But the pilot was either having trouble or having fun, because he kept banking left and right in nice even turns.

  “That’s a flying boat,” Carl said.

  The engine sound grew louder and I recognized the distinctive drone of twin turbo-prop engines. “A Grumman,” I said, watching the plane flying lazily over the Contents. “The smaller one, not a Goose or Albatross. I don’t remember.”

  “It’s a Widgeon,” Carl said, as we watched the plane disappear over Raccoon Key.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the air,” I said. “Or even on the ground. Love to know who owns it.”

  Carl turned away from the distraction. “So, what time are you planning to head out?”

  “You need help with something?”

  “The traps have been soaking for two days,” he replied. “I could probably use a little help before you take off for the day.”

  For the next two hours, we pulled our lobster traps. We ran a string of ten traps along the edge of Harbor Channel. Carl had a commercial license, but we only caught what we would eat. This time of year, lobster is on the menu most days.

  We removed the rotting snapper heads we used for bait, then dropped the traps back in the water, leaving them open to prevent anything from becoming trapped. Carl preferred they not be baited if he was going somewhere, because I sometimes disappeared without notice.

  Afterward, I showered under the cistern on the back of the house, then dressed and went down to the dock area below. I stepped aboard the Revenge, my primary charter boat—a forty-five-foot Rampage convertible, and a beauty.

  In the salon, I powered up my laptop. I’d gotten pretty good at navigating my way around the internet. I found Dan Huggins’s obituary. He’d been an Army captain, an engineer, when he was killed while surveying one of many locations for a new base in Ecuador the previous July. The obituary didn’t give many details. He was survived by his wife and an older sister, Jan Huggins, from Vero Beach, which is about halfway up the east coast of Florida.

  Searching further, I found a news story about his death. He and three enlisted soldiers had been shot to death near Manta. There weren’t many details about the shooting, and the killer hadn’t been arrested. The local authorities had ruled it a random shooting, and had no leads and nothing to tie the shooting to them being American soldiers.

  Not finding much of anything else, I powered the laptop down and put it away. A few minutes later, I had one of the big doors open and the engine on my little Grady-White warming up. Finn came through the open side door to the dock area and stood on the narrow walkway watching me.

  “You wanna go see Rusty?” I asked him. He barked and jumped over the rail to sit on the forward casting deck, while I went back over and closed the side door.

  Minutes later, I idled the short distance to Harbor Channel, used the key fob to close the big door, then turned northeast in the channel. I pushed the throttle forward and the little center-console jumped up on plane. I’d bought it up in South Carolina earlier in the year and found it to be a very solid and capable little boat.

  Looping south around the shallows at the upper end of Harbor Channel, I worked my way through familiar cuts into Big Spanish Channel and accelerated. The hundred-and-forty-horse Suzuki outboard quickly had the Grady up to thirty knots.

  I approached No Name Key and turned through an unmarked cut into Bogie Channel and slowed down. Near No Name Bridge, I brought the boat down off plane and turned into Old Wooden Bridge Marina, on the Big Pine side of the bridge. The old wooden bridge was gone, replaced years before by a modern concrete and steel span, but the marina and cottages at the west end of the bridge retained the name.

  I tied off at the day dock, well out of the way of the fuel pumps, and went inside. I bought a bottle of water, letting the girl at the counter know that my boat would be tied up there for a couple of hours, then Finn and I started across the bridge on foot.

  Denise had given me directions to Amy Huggins’s place on No Name Key. It’s not a huge island, but it does cover more than a thousand acres. The homes on the island are completely off the grid. Electricity comes from generators, or a combination of solar and wind power. Most of the homes are in the center of the north side of the island, with a smaller subdivision at the northeast corner, just north of the abandoned No Name Lodge and the old ferry station. I found the Huggins homestead easily enough, halfway down the first dirt track to the north, off the main road and isolated.

  I called out the woman’s name as Finn and I walked up a long driveway toward a house under construction. A small trailer—not really a mobile home, but more like a large camper—was parked beside the house.

  A noise from the house stopped both of us in our tracks. The sound of a pump shotgun loading a shell is very distinct.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” a voice shouted from somewhere inside.

  “My name’s Jesse,” I called back. “Jesse McDermitt. Denise Montrose sent me.”

  A woman stepped out of the shadowy interior of the elevated cinder block structure. She carried the shotgun in the crook of her right arm, the barrel pointed down at the ground. It was obvious from the casual way she carried it that she was familiar with the weapon.

  “Denise called me an hour ago,” she said. “I’m Amy Huggins.”

  Finn and I waited where we stood, as Amy walked down the steps toward us. A woman with a shotgun is always in charge.

  At first glance, she didn’t look to be several years older, as Denise had said. Aside from the ripeness of her belly, she looked very fit and healthy, with dark tanned skin wherever it was exposed—which wasn’t much. She wore denim pants, and a long-sleeved work shirt to protect her from the sun. A faded ball cap sat slightly crooked on her head, and wild, dark-brown hair hung from the back of the cap, past her shoulders. Several loose strands of hair fell on either side, framing a very pretty face.

  “You don’t look like what I expected,” she said, stopping in front of me. Finn angled himself between us, and she reached down and let him sniff her hand for a second, then casually scratched the spot behind his ear. “I somehow pictured you in a gray suit, with a hat.”

  “I’m not a TV private eye,” I said. “Just a guy who fishes and owns part of a security business.”

  “Denise didn’t mention that,” Amy said. “Want to go inside and get out of the heat?”

  “T
he heat doesn’t bother me,” I said. “But it might be a good idea in your case.”

  “Because I’m pregnant? I was born on a boat, Mister McDermitt. And my son will be born in this house, if I can get it finished in time.”

  Finn and I followed her—not to the trailer, but toward the house.

  “You’re building this yourself?” I asked.

  “Pretty much,” she replied matter-of-factly, as if every pregnant woman was a construction worker. “Every block laid and every nail driven was done by either myself or my late husband before he was killed. Lately, I’ve had to hire help here and there.”

  She walked through the unfinished doorway into a central room with a low, vaulted ceiling. The unfinished floor felt solid, and there were no creaks—a testament to good workmanship. A table with two folding chairs stood against the far wall, blueprints and tools covering it. We sat down, and she offered me a beer.

  I held up my water bottle. “I’m good, thanks.”

  “So, what all did Denise tell you?”

  I relayed the details of my meeting with Denise, then asked Amy directly why she couldn’t go to the police.

  “I’m not even certain anything was stolen,” she replied. “And if there ever was anything, it’s possibly illegal or something like that. Tell me a little about yourself first.”

  “Missus Huggins, I didn’t come here looking for a job or anything. The story Denise told me—what little there was—I found intriguing. I thought if I can help in some way, I’d like to. But if it makes you feel better, what would you like to know?”

  She nodded at the tattoo on my arm. “I see you were in the military. Honorably discharged?”

  “Retired,” I replied. “Nine years ago.”

  “Dan—my husband—was a career soldier. He’d been in the Army for ten years and had another ten to go.”

  “Ten years and he was only a captain?” I asked.

  “He made sergeant during his first enlistment, while going to college at night to finish his engineering degree. Then he went to Officer Candidate School.”