• • •
YET ANOTHER REMNANT from the Danish colonial era dotted the boardwalk at its midway point, well outside the bounds of the fort’s sanctioned historical site. The cylindrical base of a windmill once used to crush sugarcane studded the shoreline, its round tower a beacon for arriving mariners with a strong—and preferably indiscriminate—alcoholic thirst.
For the small boats that moored in the Christiansted harbor, many serving as their occupants’ full-time residences, it was but a few short strides across the boardwalk’s width to the windmill’s rustic bartending station.
A counter cut into the curving coral-rock wall allowed beers to be passed from coolers stored in the circular interior to a line of stools ringing the outside. Rudimentary mixed drinks were also available, the most popular being the island’s signature Confusion cocktail of flavored Cruzan rum and pineapple juice. The sweet liquid, often chilled with a few chips of ice, was served in the standard plastic cups used for cheap drinks throughout the Caribbean.
•
IT HAD BEEN a slow afternoon, the flip-flop-wearing bartender thought as he leaned his tall body over the windmill’s counter and rested his chin in his hands. The stools on the counter’s opposite side were empty, perhaps due to the heat—perhaps due to the overenergetic a cappella performance under way at the gazebo down by the Danish fort. The robust singing could be heard all along the boardwalk.
“Umberto’s in rare form today,” the bartender mused, tilting his head to listen to the powerful crescendo of Italian.
The bartender didn’t mind these daily singing sessions, an opinion that put him in the minority among the boardwalk’s regulars.
He found the music cleared his mind—it made him think less about his last cold shower from the rain catchment outside his shack of an apartment, and more about his next day off, when he would spend several hours relaxing on the sailboat his girlfriend captained for one of the local dive shops.
He was a lucky man, he thought as he stared sleepily at the collection of watercraft floating in the harbor. He lived on an island, he had a low-key, stress-free job, and he’d found the perfect girl.
She possessed the two essential features he looked for in a woman: she was attractive, with an island girl’s ruffled, sun-kissed mystique, and, even more important, she had easy access to a boat.
•
THE BARTENDER YAWNED, shaking loose his daydream, as a rusted shopping cart bumped toward his counter.
“Hey there, Gedda,” he said softly, nodding at the withered old woman pushing the cart onto the boardwalk from the gravel courtyard behind his bartending station.
He didn’t expect a response. Everyone knew the hag’s hearing was almost gone. Years of constant exposure to the sun and hard liquor had presumably fried her mental faculties.
She looked like a walking corpse; the calloused surface of her dark skin had toughened into a dingy gray shell. She moved with a pronounced limp, caused primarily by her lame left foot, which dragged stiffly across the boardwalk’s uneven planks.
Gedda’s heavyset figure was dressed in layers of rags. The loose-hanging folds of cloth obscured the shape of her limbs—particularly her deformed left foot—which she’d covered with an old floppy shoe.
•
THE HOMELESS HAG was a constant presence in downtown Christiansted, hovering silently around the edges of activity, lurking in the narrow cobblestone alleys leading inland from the boardwalk.
Most nights, she could be found hanging around the Dumpsters behind the boardwalk’s busier restaurants. The waitstaff would scrape their best-looking leftovers into foam containers and leave the packages perched on top of the easiest-to-reach refuse heap.
No one ever saw the woman move the containers to her cart, but within seconds, the food always disappeared.
•
WHERE GEDDA WENT after she left the Dumpsters was anyone’s guess, but the bartender suspected that she had been sleeping inside the Danish fort. Twice, he’d seen her hobbling out from behind the corner of its nearest harbor-facing wall. Both instances had occurred early in the morning, before the park service employees had arrived to open the front gates.
Gedda had either stumbled across a secret entrance or, he reasoned, someone in the park service was leaving a back door open for her.
The old woman’s digs were probably nicer than his own, the bartender thought with a sigh as the hag left her cart and hobbled toward the windmill’s counter.
“You thirsty, Gedda?” he asked, reaching for a plastic cup.
She shuffled the last few feet to the bar as he measured out twice the normal dose of rum and dumped it into the container.
Topping off the drink with a splash of pineapple juice, he gave the woman a conspiring smile, set the cup on the counter, and turned his back to fiddle with a plastic cooler on the far side of the windmill’s round room.
•
GEDDA’S CLAWED HAND immediately reached for the cup. Her grip shaking, she brought the flimsy plastic rim to her chapped lips. Tilting her head back, she took a long gulp, draining half the volume in a single swill.
Her creased eyelids closed as she savored the familiar burn on her throat. She rocked back and forth, relishing the temporary numbness the drink brought to her aching, arthritic body.
But the moment of solace was soon interrupted.
Gedda’s bloodshot eyes popped open at the distant buzz of the two-o’clock seaplane arriving from Charlotte Amalie.
She watched the plane putter across the sky above the harbor, circle the soot-stained towers of the power plant on the bay’s west side, and descend smoothly toward the water.
As the tiny aircraft made its final approach to the buoy-demarcated runway, the old woman’s vision honed in on one of the faces peering out of the plane’s oval-shaped windows.
“Char-lee Bak-ah,” Gedda said with a crooked smile that revealed several chipped teeth. Her voice cracked with eerie delight.
“Wel-cum back ta San-ta Cruz.”
Her grip now much steadier, she lifted the cup as if toasting the seaplane and then downed the remainder of the rum cocktail in a single gulp.
~ 2 ~
The Seaplane
CHARLIE BAKER CLENCHED the armrests bolted to his seat as the seaplane tilted into its last turn above the Christiansted harbor. The sideways motion churned his stomach; the tight rotation skewed his center of balance. He gulped and blinked his eyes, trying to straighten his vision.
As the plane skimmed over the water, Charlie glanced skeptically out the nearest portal, expecting the worst. It was his third trip to St. Croix since Thanksgiving, and each landing had been more precarious than the one that came before.
The pilot steadied the craft for its final approach, leveling the wings. The plane dropped through the air, now in a rapid descent toward the harbor.
Charlie muttered to himself.
“I must be crazy for coming back here.”
•
DESPITE THE PERILOUS nature of his last few arrivals into the Christiansted harbor, Charlie still preferred the seaplane to the commercial airliner that flew between St. Thomas and St. Croix.
The seaplane was far more convenient, with minimal security screening and an abbreviated check-in process. Plus, the plane’s terminus points were within a short walking distance of the downtown areas of both Christiansted and Charlotte Amalie.
Up until last summer, a commuter ferry had serviced the route, but Charlie wouldn’t have considered that an option even if the boat had still been in operation.
The ferry had been a notoriously unreliable means of transport, frequently canceling its runs due to weather concerns or high seas. In addition, the boat took almost twice as long as the seaplane to traverse the forty-mile distance between the islands. Even on the best of days, the ride had been extremely bumpy, only recomm
ended for those with seaworthy stomachs—a qualification that Charlie did not meet.
Despite having lived in the Caribbean for the last ten years, Charlie was still ill at ease on the water. Earlier that morning, he’d taken a short boat ride from his home base of St. John across the Pillsbury Sound to Red Hook on the east end of St. Thomas. That brief boating session had given him all the bumping and bobbing action he could handle for one day.
Regardless, the St. Croix ferry service had been out of commission since the previous July, when the boat ran aground on one of the cays near St. Thomas. The accident had occurred while the passengers—and apparently the ship’s captain—were watching a local fireworks display.
The official investigation into the cause of the incident had been inconclusive as to blame, but the ferry company had so far been unable to raise funds for a new vessel, leaving the seaplane as the main means of inter-island transport connecting St. Croix to its sister Virgin Islands.
•
A SHEEN OF water sprayed against the aircraft’s metal body as its bottom booms skimmed the sea’s surface. Charlie stared nervously out the droplet-covered window, his stomach tightening with apprehension.
It wasn’t the actual landing he was afraid of—in most instances, a seaplane’s transition from air to water was remarkably smooth.
It was the showdown.
As the booms dug into the water, kicking up waves, Charlie spied a small dinghy anchored near the protective reef that circled the harbor. The pilot began to swear, his irate words easily traveling from the front of the plane into the passenger cabin.
“Here we go,” Charlie muttered, bracing his shoulders against the back of his seat.
A second later, the seaplane took a sudden jerking turn, sending it skidding outside the marked runway, only partially under the pilot’s control.
Holding his breath, Charlie leaned toward the center aisle, angling his head to look out the pilot’s front windshield. The narrow view captured a chaotic scene as the plane careened wildly toward a sailboat that had just entered the harbor.
Charlie caught a brief glance of the sailboat’s wide-eyed captain, a young woman who worked for one of the Christiansted dive shops. Cursing, she spun the boat’s wooden steering wheel, helpless to avoid the oncoming plane.
A second slew of expletives exploded from the cockpit as the seaplane made yet another abrupt evasive maneuver. The plane swung into a sharp curve, this time whipping around to face the marked runway.
There, floating in the middle of the lane, was the obstacle that had caused the plane’s initial swerve.
A rogue swimmer raised a clenched fist above his snorkel mask, emphasizing his triumphant gesture with the point of a fishing spear before diving back beneath the water’s surface.
The pilot’s exasperated howl echoed through the cabin.
“One of these days, I’m just going to run him over!”
•
CHARLIE SHOOK HIS head, thankful to have survived another landing, as the plane motored toward its dock.
The standoff between the spear fisherman and the seaplane had been going on for months, but the dispute had escalated in recent weeks. The stretch of water demarcated as the seaplane’s landing zone had apparently become a prime hunting ground for lobster, and the spear fisherman was unwilling to disrupt his lobster pursuit to accommodate the plane’s landing schedule. That the practice was illegal appeared to have little bearing on the matter. In any event, the spear was pointed more frequently at the seaplane than the lobsters, the fisherman preferring to corral his catch into live traps.
As the captain’s bitter mutterings continued to spew out of the cockpit, Charlie turned toward the passenger seated beside him, a traveling salesman he’d met before their takeoff from Charlotte Amalie.
Charlie gave the man a knowing look, raised his thick eyebrows, and groused cynically.
“Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase clear the runway.”
~ 3 ~
The Sweepstakes
A FEW MINUTES later, the seaplane pulled into its slip by a metal hangar on the power-plant side of the harbor. A crew member jumped out and secured the plane’s riggings to the pier. Turning, the man grabbed a wooden gangplank from a heap of supplies stacked on the dock, and, with a grunting heave, propped it against the plane’s open side door.
Charlie Baker was one of the first passengers to unfold himself from his cramped seat and scramble out onto the walkway.
He was a small man, shrunk down in size like a tiny lion, miniature, but not petite. His calloused hands bore a workingman’s perma-dirt stain, the irremovable grime that sinks into the grooves of the skin, immune to the cleansing effects of soap or detergent.
Charlie had on his regular work attire of heavy-duty combat boots, cutoff camouflage pants, and a white T-shirt. He kept his unruly dark hair tied back in a ponytail and tucked beneath a worn baseball cap bearing the logo for his construction firm.
He looked as if he were ready to strap on a tool belt and step onto a building site, but this wasn’t a business trip. He had no current construction projects on St. Croix—for the past ten years, he had done everything he could to avoid the island.
Despite his physical appearance, this was a personal visit.
As Charlie stomped his feet against the concrete, shaking out the kinks, he gazed across the Christiansted shoreline to the boardwalk that ringed the water’s edge.
The rest of the passengers started to file past as Charlie stood there on the landing, staring at a place that was both familiar and yet strangely foreign, the landscape of a recurring dream that had gradually morphed into a nightmare.
It was here where his first ill-fated Caribbean odyssey had led him, just over a decade earlier.
This was the place where his life fell apart.
• • •
IT HAD ALL started up in his home state of Minnesota.
Born and raised in the Midwest, Charlie had worked through his mid-thirties to build a thriving construction business in a little lakeside town not far from the Canadian border.
With financial success came increased marital eligibility. The once-solitary bachelor met and soon after married Mira, a delicate beauty, generally considered the most attractive woman in their sprawling rural community.
(She was also one of the most pampered and spoiled females in the region, but Charlie managed to overlook that trait during their brief courtship and engagement.)
Two children came in quick succession, and the growing family moved into a large house in an upscale neighborhood, complete with a wide lawn, an in-ground swimming pool, and most important—to Mira, anyway—several expansive walk-in closets.
Theirs was, for the most part, a happy existence. Charlie spent long hours at his construction sites, but he was a natural craftsman, and he enjoyed his job. Meanwhile, Mira seemed content with the semi-affluent lifestyle that Charlie’s business income provided. She treated herself to weekly pedicures, bi-monthly salon visits, and frequent shopping trips to high-end boutiques in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
As the marriage reached its five-year mark, however, Charlie became increasingly aware of his wife’s spending habits, which seemed to grow more extravagant by the day. He tried several times to bring up the subject of budgetary constraints, to no avail. Whenever he attempted to steer the conversation toward the issue of financial limitations, Mira would flash him a sweet smile, swish her long honey-brown hair, and kiss him softly on the cheek. Somehow, the topic never reached a proper discussion.
As the bills continued to mount, Charlie grew less and less enamored with his beautiful wife, but he was helpless to defend against her winning charms. Resigning himself to the situation, he simply took on more work to make up for the monetary shortfall.
He and Mira might have gone on like that for years, a dysfunctional, economically ruinou
s union, gradually sliding toward the inevitable breakdown and divorce.
Who knows? They might have found a way to amicably coexist until their children were grown and sent off to college. Perhaps, they might even have made it to their golden years, aging into a peaceful détente before gently drifting off, one after the other, into the great unknown.
But that didn’t happen.
One gray frostbitten winter, Charlie fell prey to temptation.
•
THAT JANUARY, NORTHERN Minnesota’s public broadcasting station ran a sweepstakes fund-raiser. The contest featured several Midwestern-themed items and events, including a pair of football tickets to a Vikings home game, a dinner theater performance for two in the Twin Cities, and a family pass for a daylong moose safari. But the grand prize of the affair—and the main topic of conversation at truck stops and coffee shops across the broadcasting area—was a tropical vacation featuring a week on St. Croix.
Charlie tried his best to avoid the nonstop chatter about the island giveaway. He was a practical man, he told himself. Everything a person might need or want could be found right there in northern Minnesota. He had no desire to visit exotic Caribbean locations. There was no reason to mar his often wet and chilly reality with the fanciful distractions of sun and sand.
That resolution lasted right up until the final day of the fund drive.
•
AFTER A PARTICULARLY arduous roofing job that had required Charlie to harness himself to a steep incline through several hours of frigid wind and sleet, he climbed into the cab of his truck, cranked the engine, and turned the heater’s dial to its highest setting.
The radio came on with the engine. Charlie had been listening to the news when he parked the vehicle earlier that morning, and in his haste, he had forgotten to punch the off button before he pulled the key from the ignition.
Despite the fund-raising jabber that immediately filled the truck’s cab, he couldn’t bear to take his hands away from the heater long enough to hit the volume knob.
Afoot on St. Croix (Mystery in the Islands) Page 2