I was giddy, emptying baggie after baggie onto the flat rock until I seemed seated at the edge of an emerald beach, the gems as numerous as grains of sand, suitable not for constructing castles of sand, but real castles, mansions, manors, villas, estates. I laughed aloud and ran my fingers through the hoard. I was rich.
And then I was not. I stopped laughing. This treasure belonged to me no more than it did to Nigel Brooks. It belonged to the people of Anegada, to the people of the BVI, and it had been taken from them. The theft that had paid for this trove had set back my island for decades. My country’s very dreams had been traded for these jewels. They were stolen goods. And I was a policeman. I pulled on my uniform shirt, as much as a reminder of this as to ward off the cool of the evening air.
I carefully picked up the gems, refilling each baggie until all but the last had been repacked with its cargo. Fearing to move lest I knock loose emeralds back into the well, I scanned the ground where I sat, picking up the stones with my right hand while I held my finds in my left. The sun was flush against the horizon. I worried about locating all the emeralds before dark.
Concentrating on the task at hand, I was unaware of a person approaching until a long shadow fell across the emeralds scattered before me. I looked up to see a figure, female but otherwise unidentifiable, silhouetted against the setting sun. From there events took on a surreal quality, proceeding in slow motion, laden with disbelief.
The arm of the figure rose toward me. A flat slap of sound split the silence and dissipated into the open country. An unseen force punched me to the ground. The emeralds in my hand took flight, hesitated at their apogee, and pattered into the pool with a sound of raindrops. I felt as if someone were sitting on my chest. Warm liquid spread along the ground beneath my shoulders and back. My head rolled to face west. Two points of light rode low in the violet sky. Mars and Venus, I realized.
Then darkness fell.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Wake up!”
The voice was insistent but buried, muffled, calling from beneath a pile of pillows or the bottom of one of the open graves at Spanish Camp.
The kick in my ribs was more immediate. I heard a groan and realized it was me.
“Wake up, you cheating bastard. You don’t die until I say you die.” The voice rose slowly from its buried place until it hovered over me. “Wake up, whoremonger.”
Another kick. I inhaled sharply. Pain flooded in, a flaming poker in the right side of my chest. A dull timpani beat agony at the back of my skull. The kick was mere icing on the cake.
A savage, angry third kick. My eyes flew open. Icilda stood over me, her face a mask of rage. Her clothing was damp with sweat. Her scent carried an animal quality, heavy and primal. She spat in my face.
I tried to roll upright but my legs, still dangling in the water of the sink, provided no firm purchase. All I managed was a feeble flop.
Icilda laughed at my effort, a tuneless, empty laugh, like she knew she should laugh and wanted to stick to the script but knew it was bad acting.
“You’re a big man now, aren’t you, Teddy? Flopping like a beached mullet and bleeding out your pathetic little life onto the sand. You disgust me, cheating on me with that whore of Babylon. Like I didn’t know it. I knew it from the start, you sorry excuse for a man. You thought you were so clever. Well, the last laugh is mine. I’m going to enjoy watching while you bleed and squirm.”
The odor of cordite filtered through the waves of pain. Only then did it register that I had been shot. That my wife, Icilda, had shot me. I tilted my head and saw the source of the cordite smell in her hand, my own RVIPF Webley. She was close enough that I made a weak effort to grab it, which she parried with a jabbing kick directly into my chest wound. Pain seared through my body. I vomited and she laughed. This time the laughter was genuine.
“That’s right, Teddy, your own gun,” she said, sighting down the barrel at my forehead. “Be careful or I might have to do to you what I did to Ippolito before you get the full explanation.” She paused and the realization must have shown in my eyes. “Right again, Teddy. Your gun killed Ippolito. Easy as can be, just get the safe combination from your wallet, visit your office after hours while you were chasing around with that hussy, do what needed to be done, and put it back in the safe after my shift at the Reef.”
Suddenly she seemed agitated and braced as if ready to shoot. I had to buy time. I did the only thing I could think to do. I croaked out, “Why?’
“Why what, Teddy?” Icilda took a mental step back. “Why did I kill Ippolito? Or why am I going to kill you, is that your question? Same answer to both, I suppose. And I did promise you an explanation before I finish up the happy task of killing you.
“The answer to your question is—to get myself out of this hellhole, that’s why. To have a life, a real life. I know you think I have it wonderful here and I have for all these years. Living in that glorified shack. Up half the night waiting tables at the Reef, hoping some fat Kraut is gonna leave me a two-dollar tip. Changing every diaper that was ever messed by our two kids without a finger lifted by you. Home alone in an empty bed while you were out playing slap-ass with that jezebel. The only excitement what’s on TV or happening at the church. Oh, yeah, the church, with the Right Reverend Lloyd rubbing up against me and whispering in my ear, trying to convince hisself he’s not a faggot. Yeah, I got it good, Teddy. I thought I was stuck here forever until Poppa was on his deathbed.
“Poppa told me then about working for Nigel Brooks and how he took Brooks on his boat ride out of Anegada when he made his escape. He told me about Brooks’s making his detour to Spanish Camp and leaving a bag there. Poppa thought whatever was in the bag was part of Brooks’s take from his scam. He thought Brooks buried it. He and one of Brooks’s old helicopter pilots, John Ippolito, got hooked up five years ago after they stumbled onto one another, both of them digging up Spanish Camp. Ippolito had an alias and a cover ID as Paul Kelliher because he thought he was wanted in the BVI for abetting Brooks’s escape. Poppa and Ippolito threw in together and dug for years, using metal detectors and just plain guessing about the location of the bag left by Brooks.
“Poppa and Ippolito dug up and reburied most of the area behind the dune from Table Bay to the East End. When he took sick, Poppa couldn’t dig anymore and Ippolito went on without him. Poppa told me all about it the day before he died. He wanted me to have you pick up with Ippolito where he had left off.
“I thought about it, for a few days. I thought about it in the church at Poppa’s funeral, about finding all that money and how it could get me off this godforsaken rock forever. I thought about how I’d never have to wait another table or wash another load of clothes again.
“And you just didn’t figure into those plans, Teddy. Not you who came home from a day of work smelling of fish and came to my bed at night smelling the same way. Not you who grunted at me over the favorite meal I fixed for you and thought it passed for brilliant conversation. Not you who thought wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am twice a year took care of my romantic needs. No, I decided my new start would be without you.
“I decided to see the world, first class all the way. I decided I would take lovers on every continent and their very existence would be for the purpose of satisfying me. No more whining kids, no more church as social life, no more wasting my days away out here on the backside of nowhere. When Ippolito and I found Brooks’s bag of gold or diamonds or whatever it was, we would split it and I would be gone before you knew what happened. I cried when I decided, tears of happiness, tears of joy at my upcoming liberation from it all, right there at Poppa’s funeral. Everyone thought I was grieving.
“When I first approached Ippolito, he pretended not to know what I was talking about. He even disavowed his real name. I finally told him Poppa had given me a map before he died. The fool caved right in. Didn’t he think if Poppa had a map he would have used it already? He was desperate, or maybe crazy from all those years out digging in the sun, but we m
ade a deal. We would go fifty-fifty on anything we found. He would dig. My contribution would be the map and keeping him in food and supplies.
“I had to come up with a map, so I sat down at the kitchen table and drew one on a legal pad. X marks the spot and everything. He was easy to fool; he wanted to believe so badly. I just wanted to keep him digging, ’cause Poppa said he thought they were finally in the right area. I had to make the map look old so I put it in the oven. Two hundred degrees for two hours and it came out looking like it was forty years old. Best baking I ever did.
“Ippolito bought it, hook, line, and sinker. He dug and dug. I snuck food and water out to him. It wasn’t hard ’cause you were never home anyway.
“Six months into our partnership and it looked like all I got was another mouth to feed. I figured sooner or later you would notice the increase in the food budget, even though I was taking him stolen leftovers from the Reef half the time. I was almost ready to call it quits when Ippolito said he had been contacted by his dead pilot buddy’s kid. She said she had a coded notebook with information about the night Brooks hid his treasure. She told him she wanted an equal share for the information.
“I wasn’t enthusiastic about another person having a cut. On the other hand, right then I had fifty percent of nothing. So I said yes, and next thing I know, your little dog bitch in heat is here, flying around in her helicopter. I suppose she came to keep an eye on her investment but pretty soon she took over the supply run. And she needed to find some amusement and you, you lagga head, you jump into her pants. Like I didn’t know. She told me right away and we had a good laugh about how we were keeping a full-time watch on the whole Anegada po-lice force.
“Then one day Ippolito told me he was going to cut me out. Told me my map was no good, that he would get better clues from the notebook, which he and your whore never would let me see. I told him he couldn’t do that to me and he said, ‘Why, what you going to do about it?’ and laughed at me. So the next evening I went to your office safe and got the gun, to scare him.
“When I got to Ippolito’s camp, we had a shouting match and he pushed me down on the sand. I had the gun in my bag and I pulled it out and pointed it right at his face. He said he was tired of trouble with the help and reached for the gun. I shot him dead, left the scum right where he dropped, and put the gun back in the safe after my late shift at the Reef that night.
“After giving Ippolito the reward for his loyalty, I tried to figure how to get my hands on the clue notebook. Next thing I know, you practically drop it in my hands, giving it to that ganja-toking vagrant White Rasta to decode. And right at church where I could keep an eye on him till he was about done. Too bad I had to whack him to get the book, but he never seemed to let the damn thing out of his sight. Anyway, he never saw me, never saw it coming. And the decoding didn’t do much good once I got it. It was just a bunch of nonsense about the Camp of the Great Admiral and running around in the moonlight.
“When all those drug agents came to the island, I figured I better lie low for a while and I did. Then that little bitch of yours came poking around out here, looking to find Brooks’s stash all for herself. She spent most of this week here, while you were off chasing your tail. I heard her helicopter come in this afternoon and then the next thing is you calling Pamela Pickering to say you are coming out here.
“I figure the two of you wouldn’t come way out here to fuck when you already had so many other convenient locations for it around the island. The only reason to come here was for the treasure, and then you and she would fly out and disappear. So I decided to visit the police station safe again and take a sunset stroll. I was hoping to catch you both, but all I got was you. Lucky how you found Brooks’s little package and ended up parked right in my path.
“So that’s not only the ‘why’ but the ‘how,’ Teddy. Now you get your reward and I get mine. I’ll get the kids off to school tomorrow morning, kiss them good-bye, and tell them to go to Sidney and Lily’s house after school, just like when we’re both working. They’ll be fine with their grandparents, probably better off than having a cheating, lowlife daddy and a miserable mother. I’ll be on the Bomba Charger by eight, in San Juan by ten, and on my way to Europe or South America by noon, just me and my faithful companion, that pile of emeralds you were so good to gather for me. By the time your exalted RVIPF sorts out what happened, I’ll be someone else, in a place far, far away. And you’ll still be dead, you whore-chasing, ungrateful bastard.”
As Icilda finished her rant, the world became distant and fuzzy at the edges. I tried to move again and only succeeded in turning my head to the side. Blood dampened my cheek and flowed in a dark rivulet to stain the waters of the pool. Another kick from my once-meek, churchgoing wife refocused my attention on her and the Webley. The eternal eye of the barrel stared back at me, quaking slightly as tension was applied to the trigger.
In a voice overflowing with anger, Icilda said, “Good-bye, Teddy. I’ll see you in hell.”
I was far along the shadowy tunnel toward unconsciousness when I heard a sound, followed by the vague recognition that the sound was a pistol being fired.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Come on, Teddy, stay with me. Breathe, breathe!” The voice was commanding and clear. My lungs obeyed and took in air, albeit with a wet gurgle on the right side. Pain marched in on the heels of consciousness.
“That’s it, Teddy, keep breathing, stay with me.” My shirt was torn from my body by strong hands. A sudden pressure below my right shoulder became the focus of the pain. I realized it was a cloth or bandage being pressed against me.
“Come on, Teddy, don’t give up.”
I opened my eyes. At first I made out nothing in the day’s last light. Concentrating, I was able to materialize a form, then a face, and finally a pair of assured green eyes above me.
“That’s it, lover. Wake up and stay with me. You’re not going to die if I can help it,” Cat Wells said in a calm voice, soothing, but strong. She willed me to consciousness through that voice, and I grasped, clawed, clung to it as if it were a rope tossed to a drowning man.
I came fully to the world and the pain rose to full flood, radiating from my chest to every corner of my being.
“You’ve been shot, Teddy, and you have a chest wound,” Cat said.
Of course, of course, I remembered I had been shot. Icilda shot me, with my own Webley. Icilda! I struggled to speak. No words came, held down, driven deep inside my body by the weight on my chest.
My eyes sought the cause of the weight and found Cat’s upper arm above the pressure point. I could not lower my vision enough to see the arm’s end, but Cat followed my gaze.
“The weight you feel is me, Teddy, applying pressure to your wound to stop the bleeding. Looks like I finally found a way to get rid of that ratty uniform shirt of yours, using it as a bandage,” she said lightly, trying to keep me from concern.
I managed a wheezing grunt in acknowledgment. She pressed the wound firmly and said nothing more. I looked closely at her. She wore a once-crisply-pressed VI Birds pilot’s shirt, now damp with sweat and unbuttoned down the front. She had a white tank top beneath and a shoulder holster which carried a Smith & Wesson .38, butt forward. At the same moment I saw the gun, the stink of cordite filled my nostrils for the second time in minutes.
Cat peeled off her outer shirt, switching hands to keep pressure on the wound. She reached to her belt and came away with a folding knife, which she effortlessly flicked open with one hand.
“Teddy, can you move your hands? Try,” Cat urged.
I accomplished a weak wave of my right.
“Okay, I’m putting your hand on the wound and I want you to press as hard as you can.”
Cat jammed my right hand against the crude compress she had made with my shirt. This resulted in a disturbing sensation of wet and warm. I was now fully aware and tried not to panic.
Cat sliced her pilot’s shirt into long strips and tied them end to end. She h
alf-rolled me to the left to place the strips beneath me, sending a constellation of agony through me. The resulting scream was that of a wounded beast, primal and afraid. Sweat beaded my forehead and gathered in runnels to the corners of my mouth.
Cat finished binding my wound, gingerly cinching the strips to hold the folded shirt tight against my oozing chest. I felt light-headed and thirsty. Between these two conditions and my general weakness, I still could not speak. Cat must have known that shock and blood loss called for hydration and brought water from the pool to me in cupped hands, drizzling it slowly onto my parched lips.
“Lover, we have to turn you onto your right side to help you breathe and to make sure fluid doesn’t drain into your uninjured lung and drown you. I’ll try to make it as quick as I can.” She turned me before there was time for me to think about it. Incandescent pain gave way to merciful oblivion.
“You went out for a minute, lover,” Cat said when I struggled awake. “Sorry about the pain but it had to be done. You can rest easy now.”
I still lay on the limestone shelf where I had fallen when Icilda shot me. That event seemed long ago but full darkness had yet to arrive. Breathing seemed easier. I saw a shape in the dim light, three yards away. It was Icilda, with her legs twisted at impossible angles. Her eyes stared directly at me but showed no recognition. The lower part of her jaw had been shot away by the .38 slug on its way to making a gaping wound in what had once been her throat. The Webley rested an arm’s length away from her outstretched fingers.
Cat took a bandana from her trouser pocket and covered Icilda’s face. “I had to do it, Teddy. She was going to kill you,” Cat said, part in apology, part in explanation.
Sun, Sand, Murder Page 18