Sun, Sand, Murder Read online

  “Not a problem, Teddy. My unpretentious standard of living permits me to undertake the task for only modest compensation.”

  “‘Thin’ as in ‘no pay.’”

  “Well, then, it looks as if we have a deal, old man.”

  When we reached The Settlement, I left De Rasta and the notebook in the midweek quiet of the Methodist church. Pastor Lloyd was not around and no one else would interrupt him there. He fairly danced through the front door in his eagerness to begin, the coded notebook in hand.

  * * *

  The events of the last few days had almost made me forget the dilemma I faced in my private life. I guess murder will do that to a man. A reminder of my ongoing personal drama came in the form of a radio call from Pamela Pickering advising that VI Birds was flying in a newlywed couple from St. Thomas for a stay at the Reef Hotel. I would be needed at the airport to pass them through customs.

  A Jeep from the Reef Hotel, keys in the ignition, awaited the couple in the airport parking lot. A sultry-eyed Cat Wells walked the lovebirds through my cursory customs check, and I gave them directions to the hotel after stamping their passports.

  “Watch out for cattle on the road,” I called after them. They were pasty pale and only had eyes for each other. In two days they would be sunburned and quarreling their way to marital bliss.

  Cat lingered in the terminal after the couple departed. “The days without you have been long and lonely, lover. I have three hours before I pick up my next charter in St. Thomas. I told the dispatcher I’d lay over here for an hour.” She arched an eyebrow and ran her finger along my bicep. The touch was so electric I half expected to smell ozone. “I brought my suit. We could go to Windlass Bight for a swim.”

  We both knew that was not why we were going to Windlass Bight. She lay across the front seat of the Land Rover with her head in my lap as we drove to the beach. When we arrived, we tore the clothes from each other like animals, satisfying our hunger against a mimosa tree. Afterward, we did swim, though no suits were used.

  The time for conversation arrived only when we had dressed and began the drive back to the airport. Cat leaned into my shoulder as I eased back onto the sand road.

  “I heard a rumor that the call you got while I was here the other day actually was a dead man. A murder. Some tourist from the States,” Cat said, speaking into my neck.

  “Yes, the man was dead, murdered, but he was not a tourist. It was a fellow named Paul Kelliher. He held himself out to be a Boston University professor doing biology fieldwork on the rock iguana. He has been coming here for the last several winters. We all took him at his word, but when I started looking for his next of kin, there was no trace of him to be found. The address on his ID doesn’t exist and no one at Boston University has ever heard of him. One thing is certain, though. Someone knew enough about him to want to shoot him.”

  “You don’t think it was just a random incident, or a robbery?” Cat asked.

  “Where he was, you had to work just to find him. If someone wanted to commit a robbery, there were plenty of easier victims. And there was a set of footprints seen that led from the parking area at Flash of Beauty right to where the crime took place. No, whoever did it knew exactly where he was and had a specific reason to go out there and kill him.”

  “What are you doing with the investigation?” Cat inquired with casual curiosity.

  For the third time in two days I was forced to recite the tale of my shortcomings at the crime scene and my removal from the investigation. After a coo of sympathy, Cat asked who was heading the investigation.

  “Rollie Stoutt, an inspector with the Scenes of Crime Unit, has the case as nearly as I can tell. His investigation so far consists of sitting in his office in Road Town waiting for the results of the autopsy. I can give the results of the autopsy right now. ‘The decedent succumbed as the result of a single gunshot wound to the forehead, slightly above and to the left of the bridge of the nose. Massive brain trauma ensued, and death was instantaneous.’ Rollie has not come back to Anegada to interview anyone, has not spoken to me except for a call I initiated when I couldn’t locate the next of kin, and didn’t even want to see the victim’s personal effects from the Cow Wreck Beach Bar.”

  “He kept personal effects at Cow Wreck?” Cat nuzzled in as we bounced through the airport entrance.

  “Just a few clothes, some maps, a sketch or drawing, and a notebook. The notebook is written in some kind of code.”

  “Code? Why would a biologist keep a notebook in code?”

  “There wouldn’t seem to be any reason, if he was a biologist, but it appears he was not,” I said.

  “Are you going to try to break the code?”

  “I gave it to Anthony Wedderburn and he is working on it.”

  Cat suppressed a snorting half laugh. She had been around Anegada long enough to encounter Anthony as he stumbled about in a ganja-fogged stupor. “De White Rasta? That pot-addled vagrant? What can he possibly know about codes? And even if he does know something about them, he doesn’t stay straight long enough to string together a coherent sentence, let alone break a code. How did you pick him?”

  “He said he could do it. And he’s the best choice I have.” It sounded hollow even as I said it.

  Cat lifted her head from my shoulder as we pulled to a stop near the vacant airport terminal. She kissed me lightly on the lips and gave a single shake of her head. As she latched the door of the Land Rover and turned toward the helicopter on the tarmac, I heard the snort-laugh repeated.

  When things are not going well, everybody is a critic.

  Chapter Nine

  The next day was Thursday, the best day of my week because it is my day off. There was no police patrol to run because the RVIPF commissioner prided himself on staying within his budget, and the budget provided for no overtime for special constables absent a state of emergency. In my twenty years as Anegada’s sole RVIPF representative, I had never worked an hour of overtime. A state of emergency on Anegada was as likely as Her Majesty dropping by for a spot of tea and scones at the single table at Dotsey’s Bakery. Come to think of it, a royal visit would probably be the only event the commissioner would consider worthy of declaring an emergency.

  My shift at the electric plant began at midnight on Fridays, so the day was a true full day off. When we were first married, Icilda would make sure that her Thursday was unscheduled as well, allowing us time for a day at the beach at Loblolly, a snorkeling trip to Horseshoe Reef, or a picnic at some lonesome strand on the north shore. Icilda had been as hungry for my body then as Cat was now, and our outings often ripened into an afternoon of lovemaking beneath Anegada’s azure skies.

  Those blissful times drifted away after Tamia came along, and Thursdays became just another workday for Icilda at the Reef Hotel, and a day for work around the house, or for gathering a few lobsters or conchs in the Lily B, for me. Or, for the last several months, a clandestine visit to an empty beach with Cat. But on this particular Thursday, she was scheduled to fly shuttle service from St. Thomas to San Juan, so I planned a conching expedition.

  The sloping waist-deep flat inside Horseshoe Reef near the East End is home to thousands of conchs. The seemingly inexhaustible supply of the tasty shellfish is confirmed by the great bleached mounds of their shells heaped by Anegadians at the East Point over the years, first by the peaceful Arawaks; then by the Arawaks’ conquerors, the Caribs; then by Dutch settlers, pirates, and sugar plantation slaves; and finally by the descendants of plantation slaves such as me. We had all followed the same course, diving in the shallow water for the mollusks, piercing their elegant shells near the tip to insert a knife and cut the muscle holding them in, discarding the shells with the thousands on the mounds, and stewing, frying, or eating raw the meat of the conch “foot.”

  A thousand years of this did not appear to have made a dent in the supply of conchs. It did make for a pleasant way to idle away an afternoon while seeming to be productive. Free diving in the clear wa
ters on the hunt for tasty prey with an escape speed of three yards per hour, with timely breaks for a rest and a swig of rum, can hardly be matched as day-off amusement.

  This Thursday was to be particularly special because I had persuaded Icilda to allow Kevin to play hooky from school for a father-son day on the water. I had not seen enough of my little man lately.

  Kevin bolted his breakfast, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand after finishing his guava juice, and implored, “Hurry up, Dada.”

  “What’s the rush, little man?” I said. “If the conch started to run a week ago, they still couldn’t get away.”

  “We might miss something, Dada. A triggerfish, a whale, maybe even a shark!” Kevin said, eyes wide. It took me back, remembering the days when my dada would take me with him to go fishing or conching, just the two of us, free and easy on the wide green sea. “What if a shark comes after us?”

  “I’ll poke him on the snout with my poling stick. Besides, you have nothing to worry about. The shark won’t want a bony little man like you. What is he going to do, pick his teeth with all those bones? There isn’t enough of you for a decent shark meal.”

  “You wait, Dada. When I grow up I’ll be big enough to wrestle the sharks and beat them with my bare hands.”

  “Well, let’s just see if you can beat the conchs today.” I laughed.

  “Are we going to dive deep to get them, Dada?” Kevin was already a good swimmer, a comfortable young dolphin in the water.

  “We’ll go to the East End, as usual, but if you won’t be scared, we can dive in Budrock Hole. The conchs are so thick on the bottom there you can’t put down your feet without stepping on one.”

  “I won’t be scared,” Kevin said earnestly.

  “And if we fill the boat and finish cleaning the meat soon enough, we can take some scraps out to the reef and do some fishing.”

  “Let’s go, Dada!” Kevin was out the door.

  I was loading gasoline, water, rum, and limes for a lunch of conch ceviche into the Lily B when the CB in the Land Rover barked with a call from Lawrence Vanterpool, proprietor of the Reef Hotel. Kevin waited eagerly in the skiff while I took the call. The honeymooners from yesterday’s flight apparently craved nonstop action, Lawrence said. After he regaled me with a graphic description, including impersonations, of last night’s emanations from the honeymoon suite, he informed me that he had sold the lovebirds my services as a fishing guide. The happy couple, now known to the hotel staff as “Mr. and Mrs. Yes, Yes! There, Yes! Oh, Faster, Yes!,” or “Mr. and Mrs. Yes” for short, would meet me at the hotel dock in half an hour.

  There was disappointment in Kevin’s eyes when I told him our conching trip would have to wait, but he understood what we all understand on Anegada—tourist desires take priority over our own, even when it means a father-son outing must be put aside. The winter tourist season is short and opportunities to make money during that time must be seized. Icilda had lectured me on that very topic more than once in Kevin’s presence. He nodded his solemn, man-to-man assent, and I sent him on his way to his grandparents’ house, watching as he walked stoically down the dock and along the sand road. A year or two ago, there would have been a protest and maybe a tear, but not now. My little man was on his way to becoming a man.

  Escape from the rigors of the honeymoon suite had to be the only explanation for the interest of Mr. and Mrs. Yes in fishing. They staggered onto the dock in a haze of bleary bliss, equipped only with bathing suits and enough sunscreen to shield them from a burn on the surface of Mercury. A quick inquiry about their fishing experience revealed it to be nil, so I decided stalking bonefish on the flats with eight-weight fly rods would make for a long afternoon and a small tip. Opting for a sure thing, we embarked on a West End mud run.

  While bonefish on the flats are wary and usually gone before a novice even spots them, mudding bones are a guaranteed success for the first-time angler. Mudding occurs when a large school of the nearly transparent game fish stakes out an area of the bottom in ten to twelve feet of water, methodically rooting through the sand in search of crabs, worms, and other tidbits. The commotion on the bottom stirs up enough sand and silt to turn the normally air-clear water a milky shade of green-white. While the water is not truly muddy, it is the closest we come to it here on Anegada. Anything resembling a crab, shrimp, or worm dragged through a bonefish mud is immediately inhaled by one of the feeding fish, and the fight is on.

  Veteran bonefish anglers disdain mudding as artless and crass. Mr. and Mrs. Yes, not knowing any better, delightedly caught slab after silvery slab of bonefish lightning on the bedraggled spinning outfits I kept in the gunwale locker for anglers with no tackle of their own.

  At the end of two hours of nonstop fish fighting, Mr. and Mrs. Yes’s biceps and triceps had undergone a workout equal to the one their nether regions had experienced the preceding night. They took a break as we drifted with the current off the sharply inclined beach at the West End. Mrs. Yes pointed out a rusting post and angle iron just above the tide line and asked what it was.

  “It’s from an old NASA tracking station,” I explained. “From the late 1950s to the late 1960s, NASA had a downrange tracking station on Anegada. They used it to track the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft launches from Cape Canaveral. The post and angle iron are all that is left standing. If you explore the area onshore, you’ll find some old pierced-steel planking laid in sheets to form a helicopter pad. All the buildings and other equipment were removed long before I was born, but my father told me the US Navy and Army used to helicopter in supplies and equipment for the station from Puerto Rico.”

  “The navy? I love the navy!” Mrs. Yes exclaimed cheerfully.

  “I’ll bet you do,” Mr. Yes muttered sotto voce.

  * * *

  The chances of completing my conching trip with Kevin were gone by the time I deposited Mr. and Mrs. Yes at the Reef Hotel dock at midafternoon. They left a generous tip and, restored by the sun and fresh air, headed for another prolonged session in the bridal suite. At loose ends, I decided to go to the police station to see if there were any messages and maybe to get on the Internet if Pamela Pickering was not using the computer.

  I walked into the empty police station ten minutes later. On my desk was a pink slip with a message to call Rollie Stoutt written in Pamela Pickering’s childish scrawl. He picked up after one ring.

  “Hello, Inspector Stoutt, it’s Special Constable Creque returning your call.”

  “Constable, I called to see if you had any success in locating Paul Kelliher’s next of kin yet. His autopsy has been completed, with the cause of death the single gunshot wound. The coroner is ready to release the body. Actually, he desperately needs to release the body. Space is tight in the morgue. He said no one has contacted him to make arrangements.”

  “I haven’t located any next of kin yet,” I said. “I don’t think he was who his identification says he was. We may need to send a set of his fingerprints to the States to see if he can be identified that way. I have a contact in the Boston Police Department, a Detective Sergeant Donovan, who is willing to help us with that. I can give him a call and you can follow up with a fax of the prints to him.”

  “Nothing to fax, Constable. The crabs and gulls ruined any chance for prints. Every digit was missing, or mutilated to such an extent that even partial prints are not available. What about information in the personal effects? Has that given you any leads?”

  I thought about the coded notebook and decided against mentioning it to Rollie. I still had the intuition that nothing would be done about decoding it if I turned it over.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  “Well, keep trying. I’ll do what I can here and let’s stay in contact. Otherwise, Mr. Kelliher, or whoever he was, will end up in a pauper’s grave in St. George’s Cemetery.”

  “Yes, Inspector.”

  The weight of my lie did not seem counterbalanced by my motive to do good. Now I was lying to a superior officer about e
vidence in a criminal investigation. What was I becoming? Lies to Icilda, lies to Inspector Stoutt, the affair with Cat. My life was out of control. I was not cut out for this. But in a place like Anegada, you learn quickly that the only way out of your problems is to deal with them yourself, one at a time.

  The problem I could do the most about at that moment was solving the mystery that was Paul Kelliher. I went to Pamela’s office, walking past the paper sign on her door declaring that she would return on Friday. The Acer PC on her desk appeared to be more of a repository for sticky notes than a computer, and I had to excavate the grimy keyboard from the mounds of paper covering it. Firing up the machine, I logged in using her clever secret password, the ten single numerals on the keyboard, in order.

  I do not know that much about computers and the Internet but there is really only one thing anyone needs to know—Google. Calling up the Google search box, I typed in “Paul Kelliher Boston University.” The results showed nothing that linked that name to the institution. “Paul Kelliher biologist” got the same result. “Paul Kelliher PhD,” “Paul Kelliher iguana,” “Paul Kelliher Bonnie Kelliher,” “Paul Kelliher obituary,” and “Bonnie Kelliher obituary” all returned nothing that seemed even remotely connected to the body in the Road Town morgue.

  The late afternoon sun slanted in the windows, filling the office with drowsy heat. A gecko sat motionless on the windowsill. My mind drifted and I idly searched “Mary Catherine Wells.” There she was on the “Our Pilots” page of the VI Birds Air Charters website, her confident grin much more suited for public consumption than the erotic smile she reserved for me. Another site contained a report of her departure to the Virgin Islands from her position as a helicopter traffic reporter for KTRH NewsRadio 740 in Houston.

  But the most interesting find was a 2011 article from the online edition of the Houston Chronicle, reporting on the twentieth anniversary of Operation Desert Storm. It described the roles of local veterans, including Cat, in the conflict. Under the heading “Cat Wells follows in Her Father’s Footsteps,” the reporter wrote: