Baja Florida

by Bob Morris

  “He used to play football. University of Miami. Then up in Canada for Ottawa.”

  “Don’t follow much football.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  Edwin looked at me.

  “How you think I sound? You can tell the truth.”

  “You sound like something out of a dream,” I said.

  Edwin grinned.

  “Yeah, I save up some money, I’m going to Miami and cut a CD. I already got my singing name, the one that’ll be on the CD. You want to hear it?”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “Ex-Man Eddie. The Ex part that’s for Exuma. And Eddie that’s me. Edwin White. Ex-Man Eddie. You like that?”

  “It’s a good singing name,” I said.

  “Sounds kinda hip-hop, but that’s what’ll fool ’em. They expecting something raw, maybe dancehall, or reggaeton even, and I give them some smooth old sounds. You know who I like best, who I model myself after?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Alpha Blondy. You know Alpha Blondy?”

  “He’s African, right? African reggae.”

  Edwin looked surprised.

  “You know some stuff. Old guy like you. Took you for some Parrot-head, but you know it.”

  “My wife,” I said. “She knows it better than me. I just get it by osmosis.”

  “Alpha Blondy. Comes from Ivory Coast. Sings in French, sings in English. Sings in Arabic and even Hebrew. He got da real Jah love, mon. Singing for all the world.”

  I finished gnawing all the meat from the pork chop and wrapped up the bone inside the aluminum foil. Edwin took it from me.

  “I told Daddy Curtis and Momma Rose you were out here.”

  “And?”

  “And they said if that girl’s up to something then it’s a good thing you didn’t leave.”

  “You think she’s up to something?”

  Edwin shrugged.

  “Hard to say. You first see her you think she’s all sweetness because she’s got that smile and she looks fine and she says the right things. Then you study her and you watch her eyes and you see something else. Something cold inside.” He shuddered. “She was up late again last night, going through Mr. Mickey’s office, wandering the house. Momma Rose caught her at it, only this time she said something. Told her she shouldn’t oughta be going around doing that. The girl, she lashed out at Momma Rose. Told her if she didn’t watch herself wouldn’t none of us have a job.”

  “Your grandmother should say something to Mickey about it. He needs to know.”

  Edwin shook his head.

  “Says it’s not her place. She sees the way Mr. Mickey looks at that young woman, seeing his own flesh and his own blood. No good would come of anything she might say.”

  Edwin said he had work to do, but he would come back around lunchtime and bring me something else to eat.

  I told him I was hoping I wouldn’t be sitting there much longer.

  With luck, Boggy and Charlie had made it up to Harbour Island the night before. Only a matter of time, they’d be back, bringing Lynfield Pederson with them. And together we’d blow the cover off what ever it was Torrey Kealing was trying to pull.

  45

  The sun moved high and burned away the clouds. Shade became an elusive thing. The breeze punched the time clock and knocked off early. Heat settled in like the overnight guest who wouldn’t go away, drank all your liquor, and expected three meals a day.

  And so I passed the morning and no one came.

  I kept watching the sky for a red seaplane, coming in low from the north. But all I saw were frigate birds circling on thermals and big silvery jets flying high and heading for the mainland.

  The only boats moved well to the west, traveling the main channel south to George Town or north to wherever. All kinds of boats. Big boats, small boats. Some moving fast and some moving slow. The wake from the big ones would sometimes make it all the way to the island, reduced by distance and rippling against the beach below—tiny, perfect waves against the white, unblemished sand.

  Edwin returned at lunchtime with a paper plate covered in foil—baked chicken, peas ’n’ rice, some sheetcake for dessert. I took a few bites, then stuck it aside, wrapped it up in the towel so ants wouldn’t get at it. The day too hot for eating food. Even by my broad standards.

  Edwin had brought along some ice water in a jug so I satisfied myself with that. I drank it too fast and felt my temples pound.

  “What’s going on at the house?”

  “Just this and that. Mostly nothing,” Edwin said. “Mr. Mickey he’s in his office doing work. The girl, she only just now got up. Momma Rose tried to feed her something, but the girl she said she wasn’t hungry. Said she’s going to go sit on the beach. I’m supposed to go down and rake it clean and put her out a chair.”

  “Anyone call on the radio?”

  Edwin shook his head.

  “Just the usual chatter. Boats talking to other boats. People passing time.”

  Edwin left and I moved to a spot a few feet away, where there was more shade under a gumbo limbo and I had a clearer view of the beach.

  Where were Boggy and Charlie? They should have returned long before now. Either bringing Lynfield Pederson with them, or him coming along on his own, maybe bringing some of his people with him if he thought it necessary.

  How would Pederson do it? Sit Torrey Kealing down and have a talk with her. Just the two of them, Pederson coming off like this big, black Bahamian cop with sleepy eyes and a slow way, letting Kealing work herself deeper and deeper into a hole thinking she could talk her way past him.

  I would sit down with Mickey, try to mend fences. He wouldn’t like it, how I’d gone behind his back. But he’d come around, he’d understand. Especially when Kealing’s story started falling apart. Mickey would take it hard. It would tear him up and set him back. All of it made worse knowing that his daughter was still out there somewhere.

  Had Torrey Kealing, this pretty impostor on the play, bossing the hired help like she already owned the place, had she killed Jen, she and whoever was working it with her? Killed Delgado, too? Torched the Dailey brothers’ boatyard? Put Karen Breakell in a coma? Scorching and burning their way down the islands.

  It would all come out.

  But where was everyone? What was taking so long?

  I looked down toward the beach, saw Edwin with a rake, making small piles of the wrack that had come ashore, gathering the piles in a wheel-barrow and carting it away. He came back with a beach umbrella, blue canvas with a white flower print, and planted it in the sand. Came back again dragging two lounge chairs, put them on either side of the umbrella. One for Kealing and one for Mickey, he felt like coming down and joining her maybe.

  Half an hour passed. I took off my shirt, drenched it with ice water from the jug, and draped it around my neck. It worked for about five minutes. Then I was sweating again.

  Torrey Kealing appeared on the beach. Same blue bikini as the day before, same big straw bag. She put the bag down on a chair and pulled out her cell phone. She looked at its screen. Then she tossed it into the bag.

  She walked to the edge of the water and touched a toe to it, testing. She walked out about shin deep and waded along the shoreline. She kept looking out at the main channel as she waded, all the way to the dock, then turning around and wading back the other way and stretching out in the lounge chair.

  She was fidgety. Getting out her cell phone and looking at it again. As if a signal would just magically appear. She dug holes in the sand with her feet. Then she got up and waded into the water, going deeper this time, swimming a few strokes, then just sitting low in the water so all I could see was her head.

  She got out and shook her hair and gathered it into a long ponytail and wrung it dry. She walked to the other end of the beach, away from the dock, to where the beach ended and the mangroves began, about a quarter mile, directly below the spot in the shade where I sat watching her.

  She stood there, looking out a
t the main channel. Then she shaded her eyes as if she saw something, waded out a little farther.

  I picked up the binoculars and trained them on the channel. I saw a boat veering from the marker, heading our way.

  When he came down to the cabin he took off her blindfold. He put her backpack on the bed beside her.

  “Need to get you into some clean clothes.”

  He reached into the backpack, pulled out pan ties, shorts, and a maroon College of Charleston T-shirt. He pulled her from the bed. He untied her hands and feet.

  “Get undressed.”

  “Do you mind if I go into the head?”

  “Do it here. Not like I haven’t seen it before.”

  She was slipping into the clean clothes when the voice came from outside: “Hallooo. Halllooo. Anyone there?”

  A look of panic in his eyes. He pushed her back onto the bed.

  “Don’t move. Don’t do anything. You understand?”

  She nodded.

  He rushed out of the cabin and climbed the ladder to the deck.

  And she immediately ran to the head. She stood on the toilet and strained to look out the vent.

  She saw: A wooden fishing boat idling a few yards out, the young man in it holding up a lobster.

  The young man called out, “Fresh, mon! Just pulled them this morning…”

  She started to scream, but the boat rocked and she slipped from the toilet onto the floor. By the time she crawled back up, he was already waving the fisherman away.

  “No, thanks. I’m good…”

  “Make you a deal, mon. Ten dollars each.”

  “No, I don’t want any lobster. Go on now…”

  “Fresh, mon. Fresh as can be.”

  “Bullshit. It’s not lobster season. Get out of here…”

  The fisherman scowled and tossed the lobster in an ice chest. He revved his engine and began to pull away.

  She got down from the toilet. She reached behind it and found the Leatherman she had hidden there. She fumbled with it, opening first the scissors and then the pliers before finally finding the knife.

  It wasn’t a big knife, the blade only three inches long. But it would have to do. Now or never.

  She heard his footsteps cross the deck, him coming down the ladder. She flattened herself against the wall of the head, watched as he passed by its door and stopped, seeing she was no longer by the bed.

  And she sprung out, aiming the knife for a point in his throat she thought might be the jugular.

  In that same instant, he spun around, the knife catching him in the collarbone, cutting skin but doing no great harm. He rammed an elbow into her temple, knocking her down. He fell upon her, twisting her arm, grabbing the Leatherman, and throwing it to the other side of the cabin.

  He backhanded her across the face, once and then again. He seized her under the chin, raised her head so the two of them were eye to eye, blood dripping from the wound on his chest onto her T-shirt.

  “I…will…kill you,” he said. “Don’t think that I won’t.”

  He bound her feet and her hands, tighter than ever before, and left her lying on the floor.

  He went up top. She heard him crank the engine and pull the anchor.

  That had been more than an hour ago. Since then, the boat had run a steady course.

  Now, the engine throttled down a notch and she felt the boat turn.

  46

  The boat looked to be a forty-footer or thereabouts, blue hull with a flying bridge. It was about a mile offshore. I could see a figure at the main helm, but the binoculars wouldn’t let me make out much in the way of detail.

  I lowered the binoculars and looked down at the beach. Torrey Kealing had left the water and was hurrying back toward the lounge chair.

  I put the binoculars on the boat again. It approached slowly and when it was about a half mile away it turned sharply and pointed toward the pass at the south end of Lady Cut Cay.

  Torrey Kealing was under the umbrella now. She gathered her straw bag from the chair and stood there, watching the boat.

  The boat picked up speed as it entered the pass and as it rounded the end of the island it was no longer visible from where Kealing stood on the beach. She watched its wake for a moment, then turned and walked toward the dock.

  From my vantage point I could track the boat as it circled the island. It moved closer as it motored along the east side.

  I adjusted the lens on the binoculars but the glare off the windows of the main bridge wouldn’t let me see who was at the helm.

  I followed the boat as it made its way past the rocky bluff and into the pass on the north side of the island.

  Torrey Kealing was at the end of the dock now and she was looking to her left and to her right. She spotted the boat as it cleared the pass and set course for the dock.

  She waved at the boat.

  Behind her, Curtis and Edwin appeared at the foot of the dock. They held back, waiting to see what the boat was going to do, ready to help if they were needed.

  The boat slowed down, gliding now toward the end of the dock. Kealing saying something to the person at the helm.

  Curtis and Edwin headed out on the dock, but Kealing waved them back.

  And then the boat was at the end of the dock, pulling up alongside it, barely stopping as Kealing tossed her bag aboard it and then hopped over its gunwale and onto the deck.

  Only then did I get a good look at the figure at the helm. Shirtless, dark curly hair, tall and well muscled, a thin beard—the same guy I’d met in the bar at Mariner’s Inn. The guy who claimed to be Will Moody. The guy who, I was pretty sure now, must be Justin Hatchitt.

  He nudged the boat away from the dock and pointed it out, engine running slow.

  “We need to get out of here,” she said. “Now.”

  “What are you talking about? I thought he fell for the daughter thing.”

  “Oh, he fell for it. He fell for it big time. But there were these guys here yesterday…”

  “What guys?”

  “One of them was the guy in the bar, the night you did that detective.”

  “Chasteen?”

  “And two of his friends. Chasteen knows something is going on. He was asking all kinds of questions. He kept telling Ryser I wasn’t his daughter. But Ryser wouldn’t listen to him. He told Chasteen and his friends to leave.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “It’s not going to work like we planned. I’m not going to be able to stay here, pretending to be his daughter, waiting until he dies. It’s not going to work. Chasteen has probably already gone to the cops…”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I caught some news this morning, something about how the police are still looking for him. They don’t know where he is.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t like it. It’s fucked up. It’s not going to work. We need to get out of here. We need to…”

  “Hold on, hold on.”

  “What do you mean hold on? Hurry up and get us out of here, Justin.”

  He nodded down below.

  “We’ve still got her.”

  “Yeah, so what? Get rid of her, ditch her. I don’t care. Let’s just go.”

  “We didn’t do all this to wind up with nothing.”

  “We got a few thousand. We get into George Town maybe we can find a bank, get more from her account and fly south, lay low. But we have to go. We have to…”

  “What about Ryser?”

  “What about him?”

  “Guy like that, sitting here on this island, waiting to die. You don’t think he has some money?”

  47

  Torrey Kealing getting on the boat, I hadn’t expected that. The boat maybe fifty yards off the end of the dock now, not far from Radiance, pointing out to the channel, throttled down, still going slow.

  I could see Kealing and Justin Hatchitt through the binoculars. On the main bridge, arguing it looked like.

  I s
canned out to the channel. No other boats heading this way. And no sign of Charlie Callahan’s seaplane.

  I looked at the boat. It had moved past Radiance, into open water, still on its slow course toward the channel. Torrey Kealing stepping away from the main bridge now, going below.

  I lowered the binoculars. I grabbed the jug of water and took a long drink from it. My shirt hung from a tree limb. I shook it out and put it on. I rolled up the towel and stuck it in the waterproof bag.

  Thinking: OK, they’re leaving. Game over. Let the police catch up with them. Not my job anymore. Get up to the house, tell Mickey what’s going on. Then get on the radio and call Lynfield Pederson. Check in with Charlie and Boggy. Find out where they are.

  But when I looked at the boat again, it had turned around and was motoring toward the dock. Hatchitt worked the helm. I couldn’t see Torrey Kealing. She was still down below.

  Curtis and Edward headed toward the end of the dock as the boat pulled alongside. Hatchitt stepped away from the helm and had the boat tied off before they could get there.

  And now Hatchitt was hopping onto the dock, holding something at his side. A boat hook, to fend off from the pilings? But why would he need that if the boat was already…

  A shotgun.

  Curtis and Edwin froze as they saw it, then both turned and ran the other way.

  Hatchitt fired and Curtis went down, grabbing his leg. Edwin stopped, hands above his head.

  Hatchitt kept the shotgun trained on them as two figures appeared on the boat. Torrey Kealing, shoving another young woman forward onto the dock, the second one wearing a maroon T-shirt, arms bound behind her.

  Curtis sat up now, holding his leg, in real pain. Edwin pulled off his shirt and tied it around the wound. He helped Curtis to his feet and Hatchitt kept the shotgun on the two of them as he followed them off the dock, the two women bringing up the rear.

  And I could see now that Torrey Kealing held a pistol at the back of the other woman’s head.

  Jen Ryser. It had to be Jen Ryser.

  Her long blond hair tumbled around her shoulders. She shook it back to keep it out of her face. Barefoot, unsteady. Stooping over just a little with the pressure of the pistol at her head.