Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

  “Maurice will be so delighted, Carole Ann, and so relieved and so very grateful. Words of thanks really are inadequate.”

  “They’re more than enough, Marie-Ange, but if you would keep this between us—”

  “Oh, but I must tell Philippe! I could never keep such a secret from him.”

  Carole Ann nodded. “Of course. I don’t expect you to keep secrets from your husband,” and she was startled to see embarrassment rise in the other woman’s face. She quickly changed the subject. “I meant only that this is a matter for you and your family.”

  “Will you speak with Maurice now, Carole Ann?” Marie-Ange clapped her hands together in a child’s excitement. “This is an imposition, I know, to ask such a thing during a party, but it would mean so much to him. And to me.”

  Carole Ann followed Marie-Ange through the garden and back into the house. The party was in full swing, inside and out. Maurice and his father were the animated center of an equally animated group holding court near one of the bars, but when Maurice spied his mother, he excused himself and walked quickly toward her. She embraced him and re-introduced Carole Ann and launched into a recitation of Carole Ann’s interest in the Isle de Paix hospital. Maurice stopped her with a gentle hand to her shoulder.

  “Madame Gibson and I will talk, Mama. You should see to Andre.”

  Marie-Ange blanched. “Andre?”

  “He’s upstairs,” her son replied in an expressionless tone that was heavy with meaning and, as Marie-Angie hurried away, Maurice led Carole Ann to a quiet corner where she repeated for him what she’d said moments ago to his mother. He was as effusive in his appreciation of her proposed largesse as was his mother, but Carole Ann was too distracted to be gracious. Marie-Ange had been surprised, annoyed, and frightened at Maurice’s direction that she “should see to Andre.” And, Carole Ann realized, his words had indeed been direction: Marie-Ange had had no option but to respond. She excused herself with the promise to meet with Maurice at the clinic the following week, and went in search of Marie-Ange.

  As she genuinely was tired, she covered her search for Marie-Ange by saying good-night to the company, beginning with Philippe and working her way through the ministers and the actors and, along the way, asking if anyone knew where their hostess was. But no one had seen Marie-Ange recently, which worried Carole-Ann. A hostess with Marie-Ange Collette’s concern for propriety did not— would not— disappear from her own party. She had worked her way through the house and the patio without a sign of Marie-Ange. She contemplated sharing her concerns with Philippe when movement in the far corner of the garden caught her eye. She stepped off the slate patio into the lush grass and strolled toward what she saw were a man and a woman. She halted when she recognized the woman as Marie-Ange and the man as a stranger. Their conversation, even at a distance, was tense.

  Marie-Ange took a step back from the man and covered her mouth with her hand, and Carole Ann moved quickly toward them, taking them by surprise. Marie-Ange struggled to recover her composure. The man merely stared at her, his gaze demanding her departure. She ignored him. “Are you ill, Marie-Ange?”

  “No, Carole Ann.” Marie-Ange shook her head and produced a passable smile. “I’m quite all right, thank you.”

  “Forgive me for disturbing you, but I wanted to thank you for a wonderful evening.”

  “You’re leaving so early?”

  “Your husband is an exact task-master,” she said almost idly, and so was gratified to catch Marie-Ange’s companion completely off-guard when she whipped around to him. “Are you associated with the government, Monsieur,” she asked.

  He was a very pale man, with light blond hair and light blue eyes, so the flush that rose in his face was visible, even in the darkness of the garden. His jaw tightened but he did not respond. He glared at Carole Ann and she laughed at him, intensifying the flush.

  “This is Christian Leonard, Carole Ann. He is the director of the bank.” Marie-Ange had recovered her composure.

  “Not, I trust, the bank with which the government does business.” Carole Ann met and held Christian Leonard’s openly hostile glare, certain that he understood the threat carried by her words: If the island government currently was doing business with his bank, that soon would cease. Christian Leonard turned on his heel and stalked away. Carole Ann watched him depart, her concern for Marie-Ange increased. “A very unpleasant man,” she said.

  “Oui,” replied Marie-Ange. “C’est.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  One thing that Carole Ann didn’t do gracefully was handle glitches or roll with the punches, especially when the glitch was the result of a well-crafted plan gone awry. Monday morning, which should have witnessed the arrival of Minister of Internal Security David Messinger and Director of Island Security Yvette Casson, instead brought ten new police recruits on the same boat from San Juan that contained their equipment, both cops and equipment a day early. When it became clear that airline scheduling problems would delay Casson and Messinger until much later that evening, Carole Ann assumed responsibility for the recruits, not failing to take notice of the fact that a boat kept a better schedule and arrived faster than a plane.

  She found the young officers pleasant and excited about their new jobs. Eight men and two women, all of them American-born children of native Caribbean islanders, half of them married, all of them veterans of police work. David Messenger and Yvette Casson had hired them all, but Jake, through GGI, had run all their background checks, as well as those on both Casson and Messenger. She asked their names told them who she was and what her role was. And then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she walked them up the hill from the cafe to their headquarters, and they all participated in the unloading of their equipment with the excitement of children on Christmas morning. Since the bicycles were all the same, she assigned a bike to each recruit, matching names and serial numbers. And she parceled out their uniforms, hats, belts, and shoes, withholding guns, badges, handcuffs, nametags and sticks for their boss to distribute. These items she locked inside the jail cells. Then she turned her attention to figuring out how to get the ten of them to their new residences, for they were scattered throughout the island. Then she remembered: The cruiser. And if Roland Charles would make the pick-up truck available for a few hours...

  Not only was the Interior Minister willing to help transport the recruits and their bicycles to their new homes, he spent the afternoon showing them around the island via truck, car and speed boat, and then brought them back to Government House for a tour of the square, an introduction to President Collette, and an elegant buffet supper, his compliments, on the terrace of Government House overlooking the harbor. “I am truly pleased to meet these officers, Carole Ann, and I can honestly say that I am comforted by their presence.”

  Carole Ann stole a quick glance a Roland, surprised at the fervor in his voice, then turned her attention to the recruits. Yes, she thought, they most definitely were cops. Even in a social setting, in casual attire, watching the sun set over the Caribbean Sea, there was about them an awareness, an alertness, an edginess. hey reminded her of Tommy Griffin and Paolo Petrocelli and Jake Graham himself, the cops she knew best and loved as friends but whom she did not, in some fundamental way, truly understand. “I think we can all feel comforted, Roland.” And in a curious way, she meant that. She believed that each of the new officers would take seriously the obligation to protect the island and its inhabitants and visitors. She knew that in the “real” world, police presence suggested stability. She also knew, from personal experience, that no amount of police presence ever deterred those determined to violate the law. And there was little comfort in that truth.

  She strolled out on to the terrace and the conversation ceased as all eyes focused on her. If these were cops she knew well, she’d raise her hands and assume the position, but she was afraid, in this case, that the joke would not amuse. “I know that you all must be totally exhausted, so what I’m going to say is definitely
not an order and definitely is for informational purposes only: I’m leaving in an hour for the airstrip to pick up the minister and the director. Anyone who wants to accompany me is welcome to do so, and anyone who wants to go home and go to bed is welcome to do that.”

  David Messinger and Yvette Casson stepped off the Inter-Island jet to be met by ten Isle de Paix officers in uniform, standing at attention. Carole Ann left the dozen of them two hours later, comfortably ensconced in their office, eating pizza and drinking beer and telling dumb perp stories.

  “Cops,” she muttered, gently closing the door and walking around to the rear of the building where her Jeep was parked. It was late and it was dark, the only light cast on the street coming from the Bureau of Island Security office and the only vehicle parked on the front street, the police cruiser. It was, she admitted to herself, a comforting sight.

  It remained comforting during subsequent days to see the officers patrolling on their bicycles as she walked to Government House or jogged in the mornings or drove up the coast road to monitor the progress of the road excavation; to see them at Armand’s or Aux Fruits de Mer after hours; to see them walking up and down the beaches, up and down the harbor front. Since she spent practically no time in Deauville or anywhere else on the north coast, she could only speculate that the officers’ presence was as well received on that end of the island, though she had gathered, from overhead snatches of conversation at the road construction site, that the cops had not been so well received in Little Haiti; in fact, there had been a hostile exchange between one of the cops and several of the young toughs who, like young toughs everywhere, resented their presence. Then, Toussaint Remy had invited Yvette Casson to dinner, and she had gone, driving the cruiser, and had told everybody who would listen how the old man had repaired the car just for her. And as she was leaving, she told those still gathered outside the old man’s house, that he made the best pigeon peas and rice she’d ever eaten, and marveled at the fact that the women of the town allowed him to remain unmarried. By the next evening, according to the ‘vine report,’ the toughs were tame as housecats.

  “Nothing but good news for a change, Jake. The telephone lines function most of the time and the computer program is magnificent—please tell Patty, would you? In fact everything works, including the jail.” And he relished the story she told of the drunk and disorderly arrest that had christened the new jail the previous night. “Yvette said he hadn’t thrown up on the floor— seems he was able to make it to the toilet. And because he ended up sleeping on the floor beside the toilet, the sheets weren’t slept on and therefore didn’t need washing.”

  “Hell, I’d better get down there soon, so I can see for myself a jail cell floor clean enough to sleep on, not to mention a drunk courteous enough spare the floor and the sheets! Ah, the joys of policing paradise.”

  She returned him to the real world with a jolt. “Do you have any information for me on Christian Leonard, Jake?”

  “Patty’s working on it. Whoever he is, he’s somebody who’s got more than three or four sentences in his file.”

  Carole Ann was intrigued, but she moved on. “What’s the latest on the paving material contract?” They had been searching for an acceptable source for sand, cement, gravel and asphalt, and for a reasonable and affordable way to get it to Isle de Paix. They’d so far done very well purchasing and shipping out of South Carolina’s ports but, Jake said, everybody everywhere wanted an arm and a leg for shipping road paving materials.

  CA4

  —

  “You’re not ready to pave anything yet, are you?”

  “Not even close,” she replied, “but I’ve been working with Roland Charles to identify suitable sites on both ends of the island for materiel storage facilities, and he asked how much time he had before he needed to start worrying about it.”

  “He can rest easy for the next two or three weeks. And why does he want to store that stuff inside anyway? Why can’t it just sit on a barge somewhere until its needed?”

  “Because hurricanes tend to blow things away, barges included.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Hurricanes. I keep forgetting about them.”

  “You wouldn’t forget about them if you lived here for more than a week. It’s amazing how quickly that reality becomes part of your overall approach to life and living. I find myself not thinking in terms of how much longer I’m contracted to be here, but in terms of how much longer until the start of the season. Then, there’s the game people play with how many good days we could expect to have in August, because nobody is willing to concede the entire month to bad weather.”

  “But you’re outta there the first of August, right?” He feigned calm but she could the edge of panic in his voice.

  “Definitely,” she responded, “but I think I’d be OK and be able to get more work done if I needed to stay a couple of weeks longer.”

  “Well, let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. Are you still going to visit your buddy, Jennings?” His artful change of subject impressed her; she must be rubbing off on him.

  “I am. Flying out Friday morning and back on Monday morning.” Arthur Jennings was a new friend of hers but someone her mother had known for more than forty years. He was a contractor and developer who had constructed the experimental community where Carole Ann had grown up in Los Angeles, but he had retired many years earlier and had moved to the island of Anguilla. She had met him the previous year during her investigation of a crime wave that endangered her mother, and they had become friends. When the Isle de Paix contract was finalized, she had called and promised the old man a visit.

  “Why are you flying? That’s too expensive. Why can’t you take a boat?”

  “Because the boat takes too long, Jake. The vacation is to be spent with Arthur Jennings, not getting to him. Besides I’m using my own money, I’m not billing the company,” she said with a sniff.

  “Oh, lighten up, C.A. What’s the phone number there?”

  “What’s the phone number where? Oh, no you don’t! I don’t need you calling me every day to make sure I’m all right.”

  “You can give me the number or I can find the number.”

  She gave him the number and hung up on him. He really was a pain in the ass sometimes. All cops were pains in the ass, including the ones she’d just met and didn’t even know very well. Yvette Casson proved the point when she, too, requested the number in Anguilla where Carole Ann could be reached.

  “I’m really sorry to disturb you, but I thought you’d want to know now instead of returning to it.” The police chief’s slightly accented voice was low, clear and calm, but Carole Ann could hear the underlying tension and, within it, the struggle for control.

  “What is it, Yvette? All of it, quickly.” It was eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and she was on a holiday. Quickly was the best way to hear whatever the new chief had to say.

  “The construction equipment on New Government Road was destroyed. Sabotaged. Burned. And Carole Ann...there’s a body. It may be Paul Francois.”

  She closed her eyes and gripped the phone. “When?”

  “We got the call just after three this morning, and it was almost four before we could assemble a fire brigade. You know there’s no fire fighting equipment on the island.”

  “About the body, Yvette...”

  “Burned beyond recognition.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “I’m sorry, Carole Ann.”

  “What for? You didn’t sabotage the damn site.”

  Fire damage, Carole Ann thought wonderingly, fueled a mixture of anger and despair. Certainly fire consumed and destroyed, but all too often it did not eradicate, and therefore, left stark reminders of what once was and therefore, of what could have been. That is what she thought and felt as she pulled the Jeep past the devastation and parked. She stepped out and immediately her eyes and throat began to burn. She ignored the pain and walked quickly back to what, forty-eight hours ago, had been a fresh-cut
entrance to New Government Road and stood staring at the charred, smoking hulks of the backhoe and the bulldozer and the dump truck.

  The backhoe resembled a creature from an old Japanese horror movie— something scary and threatening but decidedly unreal. The bulldozer was a wounded animal gone to ground, something immense and powerful, like a rhinoceros, suddenly rendered impotent but which the mind resisted thinking of as dead: Nothing so massive could die so suddenly. The dump truck just seemed sad and pathetic— a big and no longer useful thing. And what had been a promising new road into a promising new future now was a river bed of mud and ash. Her feet in their thin-strapped sandals sank into the mire and she felt herself sucked slightly downward. The trees were scorched twenty feet into the air, and the underbrush was burned away for several yards in all directions.

  She looked around at the crowd that had gathered, some of whom obviously had been there for several hours and most of whom obviously had fought the fire: their faces and arms and clothes were wet and sooty, exhaustion etched in their faces. She was looking, she knew, for the faces of Paul Francois, of Toussaint Remy, of the mechanics Luc and Jean. She was looking for some assurance that the body that had been burned beyond recognition was not one of theirs. That meant, she knew, that she wished horrible death upon a stranger, but so be it. She was scanning the faces in the crowd, disbelieving eyes staring back at her, when her name was called from the opposite direction. She turned to see Luc, his face soot-covered and tear streaked, crossing the road toward her. He was still weeping. She pried her feet out of the mud and met him in the middle of the road. He tried to speak but no intelligible words came. She wouldn’t have understood them anyway, but she would have welcomed them. Instead he began coughing and she could almost see the acrid smoke in his chest. He raised a helpless hand and she took it between her own and squeezed and he winced. She looked down at the blisters and the seared skin and shuddered. Apologizing, she released him and sought out Yvette Casson.