by Rebecca Hale
Praise for the Cats and
Curios Mysteries
“Written with verve and panache…Will delight mystery readers and elicit a purr from those who obey cats.”
—Carolyn Hart, author of Dead by Midnight
“Quirky characters, an enjoyable mystery with plenty of twists, and cats, too! A fun read.”
—Linda O. Johnston, author of the
Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter Mysteries
“[A] wild, refreshing, over-the-top-of-Nob-Hill thriller.”
—The Best Reviews
“An adorable new mystery.”
—Fresh Fiction
“[A] merry escapade! It was an interesting trip where nothing was as it seemed…If you enjoy mysteries that are a little off the beaten path, ones that challenge you to think outside of the box, this one is for you.”
—The Romance Readers Connection
Titles by Rebecca M. Hale
Cats and Curios Mysteries
HOW TO WASH A CAT
NINE LIVES LAST FOREVER
HOW TO MOON A CAT
Mysteries in the Islands
ADRIFT ON ST. JOHN
Adrift on
St. John
Rebecca M. Hale
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
ADRIFT ON ST. JOHN
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / March 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Hale.
Cover design by George Long.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-101-56062-4
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
For Jana, Felix, and Will—
who first brought me to St. John
Her name was
Phuong…which means Phoenix,
but nothing nowadays is fabulous
and nothing rises from its ashes.
—Graham Greene, The Quiet
American (1955)
Table of Contents
Prologue
1 The Dumpster Table
2 The Amina Slave Princess
3 A Dark History
4 A Disturbing Introduction
5 The Amina Record
6 The Miami Encounter
7 Government House
8 The Empty Folder
9 Fred
10 Maho Bay
11 The Surfing Iguana
12 A Ticklish Situation
13 The Dearly Departed
14 On the Danish Slave Ship
15 Something in the Air
16 Town
17 The Vultures
18 The Invitation
19 The Trunk Bay Parking Lot
20 The Teepee Tent
21 Mary’s Point
22 A Heated Debate
23 Gussying Up
24 Caneel Bay
25 Miss Hoffstra
26 Turtle Point
27 Hank Sheridan
28 The Uncle
29 Bannanquits
30 A Wet Morning
31 The Proposal
32 Cinnamon Bay Ruins
33 The Bug Mon
34 The Signal
35 The Haircut
36 Lost
37 The Computer Programmer
38 Beneath the Sea
39 The Jeep
40 Keep to the Left
41 The Brown Bay Ruins
42 The Blue Nylon Satchel
43 Coral Bay
44 Centerline Road
45 The Convention
46 The Windmill
47 The Cannon
48 The Signal Is Heard
49 The Missing Jeep
50 A Leet-tle Chaos
51 The Condo
52 Clean Towels
53 A Darkening Drive
54 The Salt Pond
55 Ram Head
56 The Impersonator
57 The Leap
58 The Eco-resort
59 The Pen
60 The Client
61 The Paper Bag
62 A Boat of His Own
63 The Water Taxi
64 The Sinking
65 The Beach
Epilogue
How to Moon a Cat
Prologue
Deep within the murky, unlit darkness of the Caribbean waters skirting the northern tip of the Lesser Antilles, the stocky shadow of a catamaran powerboat rocked against a wooden pier off the tiny island of St. John.
The short length of the boat was built up over its center, providing an elevated captain’s tower and, beneath, a small rounded cargo hold fitted with benches for passenger seating. A line of red letters in bold block print ran across the vessel’s white-painted side. The text spelled out WATER TAXI.
The captain glanced impatiently at the empty dock and the path leading up to the sprawling resort laid out across the hillside above. He had a schedule to keep, and he was anxious to depart. But his last passenger was still en route, somewhere within the mass of palm trees and dense vegetation surrounding the cove. She had reportedly run back to fetch a forgotten item.
The captain skimmed the tip of his tongue over the plump surface of hi
s upper lip as he surveyed the two passengers already on board. They were seated several feet apart on a bench that lined the boat’s open back landing.
On the far right side of the bench sat a fleshy, pear-shaped man in a sweaty golf shirt and wrinkled chinos. He was a computer programmer, according to the resort manager who had scheduled the pickup. The resort’s parent company had brought the man in to set up their Wi-Fi Internet system. With his work now complete, the programmer was on his way to the St. Thomas airport, where a series of red-eye flights would carry him to the next vacation destination in line for his specialized services. Following the prescribed protocol, the programmer had been waiting dutifully by the dock when the water taxi arrived.
The captain’s eyes passed critically over the programmer’s bulging form. This porky, pigeon-eyed man would look out of place, the captain thought, anywhere other than in front of a computer terminal. The shape of his body appeared to have evolved over many years of desk work, melding into a lumpy hump of colorless, amoeba-like flesh that could instantly surround and engulf a computer’s console.
Even in the cool nighttime breeze, the programmer’s pouchy skin glistened with a shiny layer of sweat. The captain watched as the man folded the puffy, swollen mitts of his hands and rested them on the uppermost roll of his stomach, sedate and seemingly unbothered by the delay. The round lenses of his wire-rim glasses stared, unseeing, into the blue blackness of the liquid night.
The programmer let out a tired yawn. He’d been bouncing around the Caribbean for several weeks now, and the endless stream of exotic island locations had begun to blur together. To his travel-glazed eyes, one hotel complex nestled beneath a cluster of planted palm trees looked pretty much the same as the next.
The programmer wiped the back of his hand across his damp forehead. He’d put on clean clothes not more than an hour ago, but already the cotton fabric of his collared shirt had begun to cling to his chest. He wasn’t cut out for all this heat and humidity, he thought wearily.
A drop of perspiration slid across the bridge of the programmer’s nose as he glanced down at his watch. They were running late, but not unusually so.
Everything in the Caribbean, it seemed, ran on a laid-back, unrushed, “island time” schedule. There was no use trying to fight the delay—he knew from long experience.
After the events of the last couple days, he was more than ready to get off this island, but the boat, he reasoned, would leave soon enough. He shifted his weight, trying to ease his back into a more comfortable position against the rounded curve of the bench, and closed his eyelids with an air of resigned acceptance.
The captain grunted testily and turned his gaze to the boat’s second passenger. The elderly cleaning lady had been a last-minute addition to his roster. What was her name again? Beulah. That was it. Beulah. The captain angled his brawny arms out in front of his chest as he studied the feeble crimp of her body.
The old woman was but one of the hundreds of day laborers who supported the island’s booming tourism and hospitality industry. The majority of this workforce lived on the neighboring island of St. Thomas, where low-income housing, however meager, was at least available, and the cost of goods and services, while still island-inflated, was somewhat more manageable.
Each day, a lumbering fleet of ferryboats shuttled the workers back and forth across the Pillsbury Sound, dropping them off in Cruz Bay on the west end of St. John in the morning, returning them to Red Hook on the east side of St. Thomas in the evening. Occasionally, circumstances arose that prevented one or more of the workers from making it to the last departing ferry, so their employer arranged for their passage back to St. Thomas on one of the private water taxis that filled in the late-night gaps in the ferry schedule.
Beulah had hobbled down to the pier just as the water taxi pulled up to the dock. She was the one who had reported the delay of the third passenger, the captain remembered with an irritated thunk of his thumb against the side of the boat. That girl had better hurry up. She was throwing off the entire night’s schedule.
The old woman appeared distressed by her impending ride on the water taxi. Her bony face was drawn and pinched, her dark skin tinted with a grayish hue of concern. She crossed her arms over her chest and cupped her hands around the pointed tips of her frail shoulders.
“Ohhhh, no…” she muttered, her voice rhythmic in its lilting Caribbean dialect. “What-ter taxi…what-ter taxi…ohhh, no…”
The maid shook her head, as if trying to rid her mind of an unpleasant image. Her stiff, arthritic hands reached up and fretfully pulled on the frizzled gray wisps of her hair. Her muttering voice continued its singsong lament. “Eye doon nut lyke thuh what-ter taxi…”
Crazy old bag doesn’t like my water taxi, the captain silently translated and rolled his eyes. The corners of his mouth curled into a slight grimace. She could bloody well swim across to Red Hook, then.
The captain slapped one of his muscular hands against the top of the nearest railing. His fingers wrapped around the curve of the piped trim; his smooth ebony skin stretched across the healthy bulge of his bicep.
What was keeping that woman? He couldn’t afford to wait much longer.
A slender female figure sprinted across the resort’s manicured grounds, her path marked by the soft glow of the intermittent lanterns that lined the concrete curb of the trail. The soles of her sandals slapped against the walkway’s red brick surface as she passed through a cluster of villas and headed toward the wooden dock where, she hoped, the water taxi would still be waiting.
The woman clutched the handle of a small blue satchel in her left hand. The nylon bag swung wildly back and forth as she sped around a corner, startling a large iguana whose three-foot length skittered beneath the nearest hydrangea. From the safety of the bush, the giant lizard rose up on its crooked front legs and billowed out the frilly collar of loose skin that hung beneath its stubby neck.
The creature’s affronted gesture was lost on the woman who had so rudely interrupted its nighttime stroll; she was already twenty yards farther down the path.
The air was moist with the forecast of a coming rain; its heavy, damp presence blanketed the resort. As the trail opened out onto a sloping green lawn, the storm’s first sprinkling drops began to fall, pattering like the light drumroll of fingertips across the woman’s shoulders, spattering over the cinnamon sun-kissed tops of her feet, dotting the flowering spin of her chiffon sundress.
A member of the grounds crew drove up beside her in one of the resort’s ubiquitous motorized golf carts. He motioned for her to climb into the passenger seat beside him.
“Don’t worry, Hannah,” he assured her with a wink as the cart whizzed off down the path. “He will wait.”
The captain huffed a sigh of relief when he saw the golf cart carrying his last passenger motoring down the dock.
“Come on, then,” he bellowed as the cart screeched to a halt beside the boat.
Hannah clambered out of the cart’s front passenger seat and lunged toward the edge of the water taxi. The captain grabbed her forearm as she stepped off the pier and firmly pulled her into the swaying boat. She quickly took a seat on the back bench in between the other two passengers.
Still clutching the nylon satchel, Hannah took in a deep breath and pushed back the sweaty mass of her curly dark hair. She ran her hands over the rumpled folds of her dress, trying to smooth out the wrinkles as she worked to calm her racing pulse.
The captain wasted no time in departing. Revving the engine, he steered the boat toward the mouth of the cove.
The black silk of the water lapped at the pointed prongs of the catamaran’s bow, drawing the boat into the slippery crease of its thick, sensuous folds. Despite the glow of the numerous lights affixed to the masthead, sides, and stern, the misting darkness quickly swallowed the vessel whole.
As the boat’s rudder met the rougher sea of the Pillsbury Sound, the hoarse voice of the elderly cleaning woman rose above the humming pat-a-ta
t-tat of the motor. Her dry, blistered lips smacked against the ending consonant of each syllable, making her thickly accented words difficult to distinguish.
After several repetitions, Hannah managed to make out the woman’s mournful refrain. She closed her eyes as the small boat bounced across the current, but the old woman’s haunting, singsong voice filled her ears with its chilling chant.
What-ter taxi…what-ter taxi…ohhh, no…
Eye doon nut lyke thuh what-ter taxi…
Beeg sheep go down slowe…
Small sheep go down fest…
Eye wurk und Eye wurk,
But steel Eye’ve gut to tek thuh what-ter taxi…
Ack, Eye doon nut lyke the what-ter taxi…
Water taxi…water taxi…oh, no…
I do not like the water taxi…
Big ship go down slow…
Small ship go down fast…
I work and I work,
But still I’ve got to take the water taxi…
Ack, I do not like the water taxi…
1
The Dumpster Table
The old woman had been right to worry. The water taxi reportedly sprang a leak halfway across the channel to St. Thomas and sank before the nearest Coast Guard vessel could reach it. The captain, the miraculously buoyant computer programmer, and the elderly cleaning woman had all survived by clinging on to the side of a hastily deployed inflatable raft. But the third passenger, Hannah Sheridan—a recent employee at my resort—had vanished into the sea.
It was late morning on the island, only a handful of hours after the water taxi’s mysterious sinking, and I was already midway through my second cocktail. I sat on a white plastic lawn chair at a table outside a local dive bar called the Crunchy Carrot, waiting for news of the accident to filter through the porous island community of Cruz Bay.
My name is Penelope Hoffstra—at least that’s what’s printed on the nameplate that sits atop my desk at the resort. It’s just plain Pen to everyone here on the island.