“Exactly.” I refolded the handkerchief and stuffed it back in my pocket. “Do you know anyone that’s expert in this sort of thing? I want to know more about it.”
“I used to know a guy,” Rusty said. “Big-time archaeologist now. I’ll see if I can get in touch with him and find out if he knows anyone local. There’s a lot of wannabe treasure experts around here that don’t know squat.”
“How well did you know Dan Huggins?”
“What is this, Twenty Questions?”
“Devon’ll be here shortly,” I said. “I’m working on something.”
“And ya don’t want her to know?” my old friend said with a grin and a wink. “I get it. Danny was a good kid, though the cards were stacked against him. His dad was a rummy and his momma ran off with another man when Danny was about six, I think. Joined the Army while he was still going to college. Did pretty good, too. Made sergeant in four, got a commission and made captain six years later.”
“What do you know about how he was killed?”
“Same as everyone, I guess,” Rusty replied, polishing a spotless rocks glass. “Just what I read in the paper. It happened way down in Ecuador.”
“Any scuttlebutt about the shooting?”
Rusty stopped polishing and leaned toward me. “You know me; I hear things. A word here, a sentence there. My mind sifts through all this stuff, connecting the dots, and filling in gaps. I heard that the three men who were with him were tied up. Two of them had been kneecapped. They were all shot in the head, but Danny was the only one shot in the forehead.”
I hadn’t found any mention of this online. Torture is usually for only one reason: to get information. Torturing a friend works even better. Once the information was gained, the killer shot Dan Huggins face to face, then put his men down, like dogs.
“Anything else?”
“Latin American cops don’t talk a lot, and they work on solving shootings even less. So nobody knows much of anything. Qué es tres norteamericanos más asesinados?”
“You ever been down there?” I asked.
“Not that far south. Mexico and Colombia a few times in the eighties.”
“Ever hear of a guy named Wilson Carmichael?” I asked, looking at my watch.
“What’s this all about, Jesse?”
“Helping a friend find someone,” I replied. Right now, I didn’t want to involve anyone else, just in case it turned out that Dan Huggins was a thief—which I doubted.
“A guy by that name bought Dwight Isaksson’s boat a coupla days ago. The one young James was killed on.”
“He’s a salvor?”
“No,” Rusty said, finishing his beer as the door opened and Devon came in. “What I heard is, the guy’s gonna have the salvage gear removed and turn her into a liveaboard yacht. She’s a blue-water boat with a full keel and lots of tankage. Not fast, but she’s got a range of over a thousand miles.”
I stood and met Devon with a warm embrace and a quick kiss. She glanced at Rusty, then back at me. “What are you two plotting?”
“Just talking about airplanes and boats,” I said. “Wanna go flying tomorrow?”
“Can’t. I’m working on a case and have to interview a couple of people in the afternoon. Short notice and short-handed. They can’t take time away from work, so I have to work Sunday.”
“I’ll see what I can find out about the Widgeon and the rock,” Rusty said, as I finished my beer. “I’ll let ya know when you come back tomorrow, and maybe you can finish that fishing story.”
“We’re not staying here in town?” Devon asked. For someone that lived on an island, she wasn’t all that crazy about the water.
“Gotta get back,” I said. “Carl and Charlie took the kids up to Louisiana, and nobody’s on the island.”
“Nobody?” She shouldered her purse, smiling wickedly.
“For the next week,” I replied, with a wink.
“Be careful,” Rusty said, as we were leaving. “Gettin’ dark earlier.”
I waved over my shoulder as we went out into the cool evening air. Devon angled toward her county-issued Ford. “Let me grab my overnight bag.”
“Finn!” I yelled, while Devon got her bag out of the passenger side and locked the car. He came loping around the side of the bar, his ears flapping like an albatross trying to get airborne.
A few minutes later, we idled past the Hopper and into open water. I stayed to the channel until we passed the outer marker, then brought the Grady up on plane and turned west in a wide circle. The Rusty Tiki was just turning into Sister Creek.
“That’s the oddest boat I’ve ever seen,” Devon said, eyeing the former flats skiff with part of Rusty’s deck on top of it.
“It definitely draws attention,” I said. “People ride on it, just for the novelty. He charges five bucks from any one stop to another, or ten for a two-hour ride from bar to bar.”
Devon shouted over the wind. “The sun’s going down.”
I pushed the throttle to the stop as I lined up on the center span of the Seven Mile Bridge. The little boat surged forward to top speed, riding smoothly on the glassy water.
“We’ll get there in time,” I shouted back.
Devon leaned against me, still holding the T-top rail. I put my arm around her, pulling her in closer. In the turbulent air behind the console and windscreen, I caught an occasional whiff of her shampoo—a sort of tropical flower scent that I couldn’t put my finger on, but it smelled good.
True to my word, we arrived back at the island with the sun still a few degrees above the western horizon. “Just drop your bag in the house,” I said, tying off. “Grab a bottle and a couple of glasses, and I’ll be out there in a few minutes.”
Devon opened the door for Finn and they went up to the deck together while I raised the outboard. I quickly hooked the freshwater washdown hose to the muffs and placed them over the intakes on the lower unit. Turning the water on, I started the engine and let it run for a couple of minutes, then shut it off and turned off the water.
When I got up to the deck, I quickly looked inside. Devon’s bag was just inside the door, so I continued to the back steps, where I found her jacket, laying across the railing. She and Finn were out at the end of the north pier and I sat down next to her. I noticed she wasn’t wearing her shoulder holster. “Where’s your gun?”
“I stuck it in my bag,” she replied, leaning against me. “I can’t be a cop all the time.”
I’d met Devon when she was working a serial killer case. The psycho killed Denise’s dad, Kevin Montrose, after killing three others. A friend had been wrongly accused of the first two murders—Jim Isaksson and his diver, Jenny Marshall. Fortunately, he’d been in custody when a topless dancer on Stock Island was murdered.
Since then, Devon and I had been together for whatever free time she could get away from her job as a Monroe County Sheriff’s detective. Sometimes here on the island, sometimes her place in Key West, and occasionally a little bed and breakfast up-island.
As we shared the wine, the sun slowly got closer and closer to the horizon. There were no clouds to the west and just a few scattered clouds overhead. They began to change to a burnt orange as a breeze kicked up out of the east, chasing the sun. The air carried the scent of frangipani and jasmine, sea salt, the iodine smell of the back-country, and a mixture of other exotic scents.
Sol quietly slipped below the horizon, and when the last of the red-orange orb was about to disappear I saw Devon close her eyes to make a wish. The sun vanished uneventfully over the far horizon, and it grew dark quickly. Stars began to take the place of the sunlight and the moon seemed to grow brighter, as our eyes adjusted to the fading light.
“It’s never boring out here,” Devon said, rubbing the inside of my leg.
One kiss led to another, and with nobody around for miles, Devon pulled me down on top of her. I ordered Finn to go watch the house and he dutifully trotted toward the foot of the pier.
Later, Devon and I stumbled thr
ough the darkness toward my house. With only the light of the moon to guide our way, we carried our clothes and wine glasses across the wide clearing in the middle of the island. I dropped the empty bottle into the glass bin under the steps.
It was still warm, by island standards, so I suggested we shower and sleep on the boat, where there was air conditioning. It made no difference to me, but Devon liked her creature comforts.
We lathered each other up beneath the cistern and took turns standing under the cold-water shower, which made Devon squeal.
She grabbed her little bag from inside the house, and we went down to the dock area. Once inside the salon, we continued forward and got dressed in the master stateroom.
“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’m starved. I have two nice lobster tails in the fridge.”
“Let me cook,” she said.
I gazed at her questioningly. We both knew that her skills in the kitchen weren’t all that great.
“I learned a few things,” she said with a smile. “I even got some ideas from your friend, Rufus.”
Rufus was a Jamaican chef who worked at the Anchor. He’d been there for nearly ten years, living on the back of the property in a tiny old shack that Rusty’s grandfather had used to distill rum during Prohibition. Rufus and his little open-air kitchen had become sort of a local attraction.
“How do you want to cook it?”
“Out on the grill,” she replied. “With some small roasted potatoes, and a fresh salad?”
“Sounds great,” I said, picking up my laptop from the dinette as we walked back through the salon. “I’ll get the bonfire going to keep the bugs at bay.”
She gave me an odd look. “You need your computer to start a fire?”
“I just have some research to do.”
Most meals are cooked and eaten outdoors on my island. We have a huge stone fireplace for grilling and two large tables that can seat a small army—and we’ve had a very dangerous army around those tables more than once.
We’re always finding driftwood, which we stack and let dry. As it drifts in the currents, the wood soaks up sea water; as it dries, it leaves behind the salt and other elements dissolved in the water. Sometimes the flames are green, red, or blue. I have no idea what causes which color, but it’s entertaining.
Loading the big stone grill with a little charcoal and driftwood, I got it going first. It didn’t take long to get a colorful fire dancing in the cooker. I stacked a good amount of wood in the fire pit over by the mangroves near the northeast shore, and got that going, too. I moved quickly around the table lighting half a dozen Tiki torches. We have electricity on the island; everything is powered by a bank of deep-cycle marine batteries, which are kept charged by a generator. But I prefer the fire pit and torches. The ring around the fire pit was something I’d found when I first bought the island, left behind by some long-ago camper.
Sitting down at the table, I opened the laptop and started my search. The emerald was difficult. They’re mined all over the world. As they could with diamonds, a competent jeweler could tell where an emerald had been mined, but the variations were very subtle.
I searched for Wilson Carmichael, and came up with thousands of results. I narrowed the search, adding terms like Florida Keys, Ecuador, and Army, but didn’t come up with anything to connect Dan Huggins to any of the people that came up in the search.
“I put the potatoes in the microwave on the boat,” Devon said, as she approached. “Just to jump-start them.” She placed a basket on the table and took a bottle of wine out of it, handing it to me. “Open this for me?”
Fishing my multi-tool from my pocket, I produced a corkscrew, opened the wine, and poured us each a glass. While I continued my online search, Devon grilled the lobster tails and potatoes. She’d gathered some vegetables from the aquaponics garden and made a colorful salad to go with the meal.
“What were you researching?” she asked, as we ate. “The widget Rusty mentioned?”
“Widgeon,” I corrected her. “It’s an airplane built by Grumman in the forties and fifties. Only a few hundred were built, so it’s rare to see one.”
“You’re buying another plane?”
I laughed. “No, I saw one yesterday and wanted to know who owned it.”
She pointed at the closed laptop. “Did you find out?”
“No, I was searching for something else. A person.”
Stacking our plates, she looked over at me. “What kind of person?”
“A man,” I replied. “Not from around here, at least I don’t think so. Name’s Wilson Carmichael.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” she said. “Want me to run his name through the department’s computer?”
“No need.” I grinned at her. “Chyrel can run it through your department’s database, or even the FBI’s. But I’m not there yet.”
Chyrel Koshinski was one of Deuce’s people, a former computer analyst for the CIA, and now one of his employees.
“Not there yet?” Devon echoed.
“This just came up today,” I replied, pouring each of us another glass. “Until I’m sure there’s nothing underhanded going on, I don’t want to involve anyone else. Does that make sense?”
“For you?” she said, chuckling a little as she put the dishes in the basket. “It makes perfect sense. Where do you usually wash the dishes, when the Trents are away?”
I put the empty wine bottle in the basket and picked the basket up. “My kitchen, or on the Revenge. I want to get up early for the low tide. We can eat breakfast out on a sandbar I found yesterday. There’s a cool little tidal pool there that I want to show you.”
She took my hand as we started back toward the house. “Well, aren’t you the exciting boyfriend.”
I laughed again. It felt good walking with her, hand in hand, and laughing. “Don’t you get enough excitement at work?”
“It’s not like the TV shows,” she said. “Cop work is monotonous and boring. But the excitement meter can go to full tilt in a heartbeat. So, yes, I would like to see your tidal pool, knowing that won’t happen out here. But we don’t have to go to sleep right away, do we?”
We woke a little after sunrise. Devon went to the guest cabin, where she’d left her bag. Storage space on a boat is at a premium, and only half the drawers in the guest cabin were empty. In the galley, I loaded a cooler with bottles of water and bowls of sliced fruit. Devon came up the steps wearing a little green bikini top and a pair of worn, cut-off jeans, the top button unfastened. Her skin was nearly as tan as my own. Looked a lot better, though.
“How far is this tidal pool?” she asked, opening one of the containers and putting a chunk of mango in her mouth.
“Not far. Less than a mile.”
We stepped out of the cabin into the humid air trapped below the house.
Devon looked around. “Which boat are we taking?”
“We’re not taking a boat,” I said, leading her out the door and up the steps. Finn bounded ahead of us.
“We’re walking?”
“It’s too shallow for a boat,” I replied. “Don’t worry, you’ll barely get your knees wet.”
With Finn’s help, we found the little tidal pool again. The exposed sand flat that encircled it was so low that it wasn’t even visible from just a hundred yards away.
I spread a large blanket on the bright white sand. “We only have a few hours before this will be under water.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”
“Take your shorts off and wade out into the pool. It’s been landlocked for hours and a lot of the water has evaporated.”
Devon wiggled her hips as her shorts came down, and she dropped them on the blanket. “Are you joining me?”
“Yeah,” I replied, as I walked with her to the edge of the small tidal pool, “but I want to see your reaction.”
“Reaction to what?” She took a tentative step into the clear water.
“Just indulge me
,” I said, with a grin and a wink.
She waded into the water, which quickly rose to waist-deep. I wasn’t worried that it would be cold. Even in the winter, the water doesn’t get very cold here; tidal pools, being separated from the surrounding water, warmed quickly.
“The water’s a lot hotter than what we waded through to get here,” Devon said, turning and facing me. “Is that it?”
“Part of it,” I responded, taking a few steps into the warm water. “Lay back and float.”
“I don’t float,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You know that.”
“Amuse me. This water’s a little different.”
Slowly, Devon lowered herself into the warm water. When the water reached her shoulders, her legs nearly slipped out from under her, and she floated easily, like a cork.
“What the hell?” she exclaimed, twisting her body to get her feet back under her, and standing up.
“Most of the water’s evaporated,” I said, walking out toward her. “The salinity in this pool is twice that of the water around it, I bet. No chance of even a non-swimmer sinking in water like this.”
“Really?” she asked, lowering herself again as I reached her side.
“Just relax, let the water support you.”
As her breasts submerged, her buoyancy changed, lifting her feet from the bottom, again. I got lower and easily scooped her up in my arms.
“Just relax and stretch your body out,” I said. “Like you’re stretching out on a big luxurious bed. Move your arms out wide, to balance yourself.”
When she complied, I still had one hand under her thighs and the other under her shoulders. I was barely supporting her as she floated on her back. When I took my hands away, she drifted freely—and quite provocatively—with half her body above water.
She squirmed and nearly rolled over, as she struggled to her feet. “That’s amazing!”
Finn’s muffled bark drew our attention. We looked over, and he came bounding out of the water on the other side of the sandbar with a clam in his mouth.
“Breakfast is served,” I said, as Finn dropped the clam and sprang back into the water to get more. Hand in hand, we splashed back toward shore.
Rising Storm: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 11) Page 4