“Not sure that’s something to brag about, Sid,” Sophie said with a smile. “Emily, how about you?”
Emily gave a thumbs up, turning to Sid as Sophie left for the kitchen. “You’re not on painkillers?” Emily asked.
“Just ibuprofen. Two ribs had hairline fractures—nothing too serious. I’m on modified duty for a few days. They’re going to put me in the police annex in Windwardside.”
“Further away from me,” Sophie said wistfully, returning with a pair of Heinekens.
“Oh, come on. You spend half your time posted at the airport.”
“Are you a pilot?” Emily asked, taking a beer and plopping into a matching rattan seat alongside the sofa.
“Funny you should ask. I’ve been training for a pilot’s certification but no, I’m with the fire department. Half our members are posted at the airport every day, but the main office is right here in The Bottom next to the police station. That’s where I met Sid.”
“And I’ll never forget that day,” Sid said, whistling and shaking his head.
“What, was it love at first sight?” Emily asked.
Sophie snorted a laugh and Sid blushed, hemming and hawing, “Umm… no…” Sophie gasped in mock offense, and Sid continued, “Wait, I mean, sure it was! But…”
Sophie just laughed harder and Boone grinned, sitting in a cane chair. “Okay, this I gotta hear.”
“Well…” Sid cleared his throat. “I was bringing in a suspect. Drunk and disorderly—the man had started a fight at a local house bar. He was very apologetic and came quietly so I made the mistake of not cuffing him. He was a friend of one of my squad mates and I figured I’d get him in a cell and let our mutual friend handle the booking. When I took him from the car, he rushed me…”
“He knocked you on your ass, as I recall,” Sophie interjected.
“Yeah, yeah… so, he makes a run for it around the back, toward the fire department. I follow, yelling for him to stop… and Sophie stopped him. Oh, man, did she ever.”
Emily leaned forward, looking up at the tall woman. “What did you do?”
Sophie shrugged. “A takedown. I did give him a chance to play nice.”
Sid sat up and set his beer down on the glass-topped coffee table, a tremor of excitement in his voice. “Sofe here steps in front of the guy, holds a hand up in front of his face—the man grabs for her and… and I still don’t know exactly what she did—it happened so fast—but the guy was on the ground and gasping in the blink of an eye. She even held him in an arm lock while I got the cuffs on him.”
Sophie reached down and ran a hand through Sid’s hair. “I’d seen Sid around the station and thought he was cute—been wondering how I could get him to notice me.”
Sid laughed. “I’d already noticed you, you know that. You were just showing off.”
“Maybe a little,” Sophie said, smiling as she took a swig from her beer.
“What’s your style?” Boone asked.
Sophie looked at Boone over the bottle. “Krav Maga. I lived in Sint Maarten for a while and trained at a studio there.”
“Is that some kind of Caribbean martial art?” Emily asked.
“Oh, no, it’s an Israeli combat style, developed by their military. Most of the indigenous Caribbean martial arts involve baton sticks or cutlasses.”
“Cutlasses?” Boone spluttered. “What, like pirates?”
Sid laughed, “No, that’s what Sabans call a machete.”
“Boone here is into martial arts,” Emily said. “He does that crazy dance karate… what is it, Boone? Caipirinha?” Emily raised her eyebrows at him, all innocence. She knew very well the name of the martial art he practiced, but she loved to “accidentally” confuse it with the popular Brazilian cocktail of cachaça, sugar, and lime.
Boone gave her a look before turning back to Sophie. “Capoeira. I also practice Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.”
Sophie looked at Boone with focused interest. “I’m going to guess you’re pretty good, aren’t you?”
Boone shrugged. “Brown belt in jitsu. The capoeira… my teacher didn’t really do rankings.”
Emily knew Boone was being modest. One of the other dive instructors on Bonaire had told her that Boone was easily the equivalent of a black belt in both disciplines—he simply hadn’t bothered to jump through some of the necessary hoops to officially rank. She was about to say so but stopped herself. Sophie seemed a bit too interested for her tastes. And the woman was statuesque and beautiful. Jealous much, Em? she thought to herself.
Sophie looked at Boone a moment longer before taking another sip from her beer and plopping down next to Sid. “I’d love to spar with you sometime,” she said nonchalantly.
Sid didn’t seem at all concerned with his girlfriend’s offer. “Careful, Boone… or you’ll wind up convalescing right beside me. She’ll get you down on the ground and—”
“Say, Boone, did you want to tell Sid about that bloke that creeped you out?” Emily blurted. “And the broken lock?”
“What broken lock?” Sid asked, levity slipping from his face.
Boone quickly recounted his brief encounter with the stranger and the discovery of the broken hasp on the trail shop door. “Look, I didn’t actually see the guy do anything wrong.”
“And Gordon didn’t recognize him? He seems to know everything about everyone on this island, so I’m thinking the man you saw was a tourist looking to go for a hike.”
“How many tourists do you know who wear gray coveralls?”
Sid didn’t have an answer for that. “Here’s what I’ll do… I’m going to be at the annex tomorrow morningit’s next door to Saba Snack, right up the street from the trail shop. I’ll stop by as soon as they open and take a look, see if anything was taken.”
“Have them check their maps,” Boone said.
After a late dinner at Island Flavor in The Bottom, Sophie offered to take Boone and Emily back up to El Momo. Boone accepted and Emily immediately called shotgun. Once they were on their way, Boone leaned forward between the seats and asked numerous questions. On the twenty-minute ride, they learned several things about Sophie Levenstone. Both of her parents were seventh-generation Sabans and Sophie had grown up on the island, going to university in the States before spending some time on Sint Maarten, the Dutch portion of the dual French/Dutch island of Saint Martin. Her mother was a white Saban of Dutch descent and her father was of African descent. More importantly, he was a grandchild of the legendary Rebecca Levenstone.
“I never met her,” Sophie said, “but every Saban knows the story of when my great-grandmother hauled a piano up The Ladder on her back.”
“What’s The Ladder?” Boone asked.
“There’s a sheltered bay on the leeward side and before they built up Fort Bay, The Ladder was the only way to get goods and passengers ashore. You had to climb 800 steps, zig-zagging up to the customs house on the cliff, and then from there it was still a hike. You’ll see that old, abandoned customs house a lot—it’s above several of the popular dive sites. So, Rebecca was strong as an ox, and she would help the men unload the boats and bring the goods up The Ladder. More often than not she’d keep going, delivering things to people in the various villages.”
“Hold on, back up a wee bit,” Emily interjected. “She hauled a piano up 800 steps by herself?”
“That’s the story,” Sophie said. “My parents stick by it.”
“Think you’ve inherited some of your great-grandma’s super-strength?” Boone asked.
Sophie tossed a glance back over her shoulder. “Spar with me and find out.”
“So, hey!” Emily broke in quickly. “That’s cool… what’s that?” She pointed at a little outcrop of buildings on a plateau to their right, the moonlit cliffs below it angling steeply toward the ocean.
“That’s St. John’s. Most of the schools for the isla
nd are there, except the big medical college in The Bottom.”
“Can you climb down from there?” Emily asked. “To the sea?”
“Down the gut? Sure, you could make it down there, but it would be a hot hike back up. Oh, that kind of steep ravine? We call it a gut.”
“Guts and cutlasses…” Boone mused. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The next day, Boone wanted to get an early start moving in, so he bid the owner of El Momo farewell as the man called him a cab. Boone and Emily brought their luggage down the steps and were picked up by a cabbie named Garvis Hassell, a tall, lanky man who looked a bit like Anthony Bourdain. Emily asked if he was related to Rodney Hassell but Garvis, who was an eighth-generation Saban, explained that Hassell was the most common name on the island, with Johnson a close second. Just outside of Windwardside, the taxi pulled into a driveway on the left and Garvis announced they had arrived, dropping them off and motoring back onto The Road, heading down toward the airport.
As they pulled their luggage down the driveway, a tiny cottage came into view, the landscaping around it teeming with flowers. A tiny green sign with hand-painted lettering announced that this was Hummingbird Haven, and the name was justified in seconds as a shimmering hummingbird flitted by, coming to a hover by a stand of bright red heliconia. The cottage itself had the standard red roof and white walls, and numerous windows were framed in a dark green. A little flagstone path led around the side of the cottage, where a tiny outdoor seating area was set up just outside the front door. The view down the slopes to the Caribbean was breathtaking.
“Oh, Boone, I love it!”
“It’s beautiful,” Boone breathed. “Sure beats my little house in Rincon.” Boone fished the key from the envelope to unlock the door, but Emily was already opening it.
“No crime, remember?”
Boone tucked the luggage just inside before heading back outdoors. “Let’s take a stroll back to Windwardside.”
“You don’t want to put your stuff away?”
“Coffee first. Let’s go back to town to grab some and hit the post office when they open.”
“Ooh, I’d quite fancy a cuppa.”
Boone looked at her askance. “Doesn’t it mean ‘tea’ when you say cuppa?”
“Quit trying to suss my lingo, you half-Dutch Yank, for I am unfettered by the conventional norms of dialectic discourse,” Emily intoned, letting her strong South London accent slip into a stuffy, professorial drone.
Boone grinned broadly at her. “That made no sense.”
“You knew what I meant, yeah? So, it made sense. Now, let’s go see if this island has decent coffee.”
After a short walk back to Windwardside, they picked up some breakfast at a bakery and coffee shop called Bizzy B. Eva at El Momo had recommended it. She might have been biased, seeing as she worked there from time to time, but as it turned out, the breakfast was delicious and the coffee was gratifyingly strong. They sat in a little area of tables and chairs that might have been called a plaza, though it was scarcely wider than a couple of alleys put side-by-side. After they finished up and rose to leave, they passed Gordon Hollenbeck and Gerald—they’d never learned his last name—who were headed into the Bizzy B. Gerald was an older man about Gordon’s age, tall and thin, with a shiny bald head and a pencil-thin mustache. He had driven Gordon and the two of them up from the airport in his little red jalopy.
“Good to see you again,” Gerald said, shaking their hands. “I see you’ve found the place to get a decent cup of joe. Gordon and I were thrilled when this place opened up. With my New York roots, I’m a bit of a coffee snob, and it can be hard to get decent coffee in the islands. Gordon tells me you’re over in English Quarter?”
“Yeah,” Boone said. “Not too far. Beautiful view—haven’t checked out the interior yet. It’s called Hummingbird Haven.”
“Ah, Amber’s rental cottage,” Gordon said. “Splendid view.”
“Where do you lads live?” Emily asked.
“Lads… oh I like this one. Makes me feel twenty years younger.” Gordon pointed across The Road and up a rise. “Young lady, we have a little place behind the Saba Tourism office, up the hill a bit. The one with the red roof.” He winked at her.
“Good one,” she said.
“Well, we’ll leave you two to enjoy your morning. I’m sure we’ll bump into you again soon—that’s the nature of Saba. Come on Gerald, it’s croissant time!” And with that, the two gentlemen entered the bakery.
“Where to next?” Emily asked.
“Post office opens early. Let’s see if anything made it yet, and then we can hit one of the grocery stores.”
By mid-afternoon they had settled in and decided to swing back into town and see if Sid had found anything out about the potential break-in. Grabbing some soursop smoothies from Saba Snack, they went next door to the police annex, which actually shared the same storefront. Sid was sitting inside, somehow managing to look both bored and restless.
“Hey Sid,” Boone said. “You don’t look all that happy to be here.”
“It’s my ribs… can’t get comfortable. Ah, you’ve found the smoothie shop next door, have you? You’ll be Sabanized in no time. They have some of the best Wi-Fi, by the way. I’m actually on their network right now. Shhh… don’t tell. Pull up a seat. I can pretend to book you, if that sounds like fun.”
“Well, Emily did drop her coffee cup on the way over to our cottage.” Boone said, folding his lanky form into a plastic chair.
“Hey!” Emily protested.
“Littering…” Sid tsked and shook his head solemnly. “Saba takes its ecotourism very seriously. She’s nicknamed The Unspoiled Queen, and you, young lady, have spoiled her.”
“Also, she snores.”
Emily socked Boone in the biceps. “I do not! And I picked that coffee cup back up, after I accidentally dropped it while opening the lid to a rubbish bin.”
“It did touch the ground, officer,” Boone said solemnly. “Do you have handcuffs in the annex?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay fellas, I’m about ready to kick some serious bro butt. Maybe get Sophie to teach me a trick or two.”
Boone looked at Emily, aghast. “Are you… threatening Sid? An officer of the law?”
“Drink your soursop, string bean,” Emily ordered. “So, Sid, the break-in… was it a break-in?”
“The best answer I can give is ‘maybe’. My father and I stopped by and the girl who was working Sunday says the hasp across the door wasn’t broken when she locked up. But she said it had come loose a time or two before… and she checked, and no money or inventory was taken.”
“But…” Boone prompted.
“But I remembered you saying something about maps, so we called ‘Crocodile’ Johnson—he’s pretty much the trail boss for the island. I asked him about any stash of maps other than the tourist ones and Croc said they kept some detailed survey maps at the shop, including some for unofficial trails that go back 400 years, as well as some partial maps of the old sulphur mine.
“Sulphur mine? I didn’t know there was any mining on the island,” Boone said.
“There isn’t, not since the turn of the century, anyway. The mine is abandoned, and some of the tunnels are gated off. They haven’t been fully explored. A few years ago, a tourist went missing—they found his mummified body a year later. It can get incredibly hot in there and the sulphur can make it difficult to breathe in places. Here, check it out.” He pulled out his smart phone and scrolled through some photos before finding one and holding it up. In the shot, a sweaty Sid and Sophie were standing alongside a cave opening, smiles on their faces and yellow smears on their T-shirts and shorts. “We took a tour. Really cramped in there! The mines are mostly sealed now with a single known entrance, but Croc thinks there are others.”
“Hang on. I’m still working
on the name Croc,” Emily said. “There aren’t crocodiles on Saba, are there?”
Sid smiled. “No. A big iguana or two, but no crocodiles. But if you met James—his real name is James—chopping through the brush of a trail with his cutlass, you’d see the name’s pretty on-the-nose. I think he took it from that movie, Crocodile Dundee, but he’s not Australian—eighth-generation Saban.”
“So, were the maps there?” Boone asked.
“No. They were supposed to be in a stack in the back, but we couldn’t find them.”
“Why would anyone want to steal a bunch of old maps?” Boone mused.
“Maybe he’s a cartography addict and needed a fix,” Emily suggested.
Sid shook his head, thinking. “It seems like an unlikely thing to take. Boone, what you saw in the man’s hand might have been his own map, just a tourist one. Saba Conservation’s going to look around for the missing ones. Someone official might have borrowed them—maybe Ryan, who’s the island’s archaeological specialist. Heard he might be doing some excavations at the old abandoned village of Mary’s Point.”
“Makes sense,” Boone said.
“Hey, here’s something of interest. The boat we used to go after the submarine, that Viking, the Wavy Davey? The smuggler we impounded it from is in lockup at the station, but he’s scheduled to be taken to Sint Maarten tomorrow. My father decided to have a final chat with him, and he’s convinced that the man didn’t act alone, that there was another man on board who must’ve been on island when we boarded the boat in Fort Bay.”
“So, you think you’ve got a smuggler running around on the island?” Emily asked.
“Well, Saba has a long history of pirates and smugglers hiding out,” Sid said. “The terrain is a natural fortress, and with there being no port here for so long, it was a good place for people on the run from the law.”
“Will we never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy?” Emily asked innocently.
“Nerd,” Boone said, giving her a playful shove.
Sid laughed, getting the reference. “Some of the stories are greatly exaggerated, I’m sure, but I bet plenty of them are true. One of my favorites: they say privateers would bring captured ships here, and either repair, repaint, and rename them… or strip them of parts and scuttle them in the deeper waters offshore. Kind of a maritime chop shop, I suppose.”
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