Adrift on St. John (17 page)

Leaning back in my seat, I let my gaze travel to the sand-filled playground near the fence surrounding the tennis courts. Several black and green torpedo-like shapes were stretched out across the shadowed ground where Fred and his fellow iguanas stalked one another beneath the jungle gym equipment.

Slowly, I brought the rim of the cup to my lips—and nearly choked as the first sip burned down my throat.

“That’s not a peace offering, Manto,” I muttered under my breath once I finally managed to swallow. “She’ll think I’m trying to poison her.”

I didn’t have long to wait. A moment later, the golf cart groaned as Vivian’s sturdy figure climbed into the vacant driver’s seat.

“Vivian,” I said with mock surprise, keeping my gaze firmly fixed on the iguanas. “How’ve you been?”

She assumed a similar visual stance. “Busy,” she replied crisply, as she stared out over the steering wheel.

“Can I pour you one?” I asked, digging into the compartment for the second cup.

Vivian scowled. “You know I don’t like that stuff.”

“That’s all right,” I said with a shrug. “Leaves more for me.”

Her thick lips pinched with disapproval. She thrust her hand into the compartment and pulled out the cup. “Fill it up, then,” she grumped.

The two of us sipped in silence as the iguanas waddled on their crooked legs across the sand. They appeared to be participating in some sort of elaborate mating ritual. Every so often, they all froze in position and gave each other affectionate, lizard-eyed looks.

“I got your message,” Vivian said, tersely breaking the silence. “About Miss Sheridan.”

I scratched my chin thoughtfully. “Message?” I repeated with exaggerated puzzlement, already dismissing Manto’s parting words of caution. It was never too soon to start pushing Vivian’s buttons.

“There was nothing in her file,” she said stiffly, ignoring my tease. “That’s how it came in the pouch from headquarters.”

She swiveled in her seat, her accusing glare turned to its highest setting. “Just like four years ago—when
you
arrived.”

Fred looked up from beneath a teeter-totter as I cleared my throat uncomfortably. I’d never given Vivian credit for having that much intuition.

Vivian snorted as if she had come to the same conclusion about me.

“At least
that one
does some work around here,” she added with a grumpy smirk. “More than I can say for the likes of
you
.”

She lifted the top layer of papers secured to her clipboard and pulled out a legal-sized envelope. It was similar to the
one that had held the Maho Bay information I’d received the previous week.

“Something came for you in the mail,” she said cryptically as she handed it over.

With a sigh, I set my cup on the dashboard and sized up the envelope. Given its light weight and lack of bulging, there couldn’t have been more than a single sheet of paper inside.

“More from the home office on the Maho Bay deal,” I moaned.

Vivian rejected this notion with a firm headshake. “They’re not in that hunt. You know they don’t have that kind of money.”

Perplexed, I thought back to the previous package. With a start, I realized it had come in on the same day that Hannah Sheridan had visited my office. In my mind’s eye, I saw the young woman nervously crossing from the couch to my desk—and bumping into a stack of papers on its surface. Was the package a fake? Had she slid it into my inbox?

After another glance at Vivian, I pulled out a short typewritten letter from the current envelope and began reading it aloud.

“Agreeable assistant?” I chortled, despite my growing apprehension. I turned my head sideways toward the driver’s seat. “Graciously arranged?”

Not once in Vivian’s entire miserable life had she been described as agreeable or gracious, and certainly not in the same sentence.

Vivian replied with her iciest stare. “I can assure you, I did nothing of the sort.”

The paper in my hands was appearing less authentic by the minute.

“Keep reading,” she added with a grunt.

“Ahem,” I said, briefly raising my eyebrows.

When I reached the signature line, there was no longer any doubt. My face paled as I read the sender’s name.

The person listed at the bottom of the letter was one I’d never seen or heard of before. A final look at Vivian’s skeptical face confirmed my suspicions. Despite the printed stationary and the formal-looking address label, the writer wasn’t in any way affiliated with the resort’s parent company.

My upcoming dinner meeting was with a man I presumed to be the “uncle” Hannah had referred to that first morning when she arrived at the resort.

I felt certain I was about to receive a visit from the wide-girthed man from Miami.

The signature line read “Hank Sheridan.”

19

Manto hummed happily to himself as he steered a truckload of resort guests off North Shore Road into the parking lot for Trunk Bay, the access point for St. John’s signature—and most visited—beach.

The passengers scrambled out of the back bed’s covered seating area and hurriedly stopped by his driver’s-side window to pay their fares. After making change for the last amount, Manto tucked the residual into his bulging wallet. Then, he climbed out of the truck’s cab and watched as his passengers eagerly approached the ticket kiosk at the edge of the parking lot.

It had been a busy couple of days on the truck-taxi shift, he reflected as a pleased smile creased his ruddy face. He was enjoying the reassurance the extra dollars would bring to his bank account.

Trunk Bay was the only beach in the national park that charged admission, but the payment brought with it a nice array of amenities that many considered worth the fee. In the calm water beyond the beach, an underwater trail led snorkelers
to a large cay patrolled during the daytime hours by a lifeguard. Shower facilities, storage lockers, a food stand, and a snorkel rental shop serviced the hundreds of vacationers who traipsed through the area during the high season.

For most of the island’s visitors, it was a must-do, if crowded, experience. On a day like today, Manto mused as the line in front of the ticket booth continued to grow, the water probably held more people than fish.

He glanced down at his silent two-way radio and then checked his watch. By now, there should be plenty of trucks waiting in town to carry potential riders into the park. It was late enough in the afternoon, he decided, to wait there at Trunk Bay for the flow of tourists to reverse course from the beaches back to the resorts.

Stretching the soreness in the small of his back, he meandered over to a row of shaded picnic benches where several of the other drivers had gathered.

Throughout the daytime hours, the truck taxies maintained a visible presence throughout the national park, informally organizing into a network of impromptu drop-off and pickup points at the most popular beaches. The largest congregation of drivers were generally located at the Trunk Bay parking lot, which had a sizeable marked-off area for their vehicles. In the slow period during the early afternoon, ten or more men could often be seen sitting or standing around the picnic tables.

Manto nodded hellos as he approached. It was a cordial group, and he had known most of the men for years.

The drivers rarely competed with each other for rides; such behavior would have broken their unspoken code of conduct. Each of the men wore a quiet, detached demeanor that matched their loose-fitting slacks and button-down linen shirts. Tourists frequently misunderstood this reserved attitude for laziness, but a driver would sooner refuse a fare than take on an insulting or disruptive passenger.

The men were all wired with cell phones and walkie-talkies
that squawked and chirped as they chatted with one another. The contents of several sack lunches were spread out across the tables. This was a communal time, an important social hour in their day, dedicated to a few games of chess and the exchange of local gossip. The eyes and ears of the truck-taxi drivers picked up everything that went on in this small island community. Little escaped the wide net of their surveillance.

As Manto strolled up to one of the picnic benches, he caught sight of a small transistor radio that had been plugged into the power outlet of one of the trucks’ cigarette lighters.

The radio was an almost permanent fixture at the Trunk Bay truck-taxi stand. Recently, it seemed, the dial had been fixed to the station relaying the Constitutional Convention proceedings. This afternoon, Manto noted with relief, the signal had been switched over to a broadcast of an event in Charlotte Amalie commemorating the 1733 Slave Revolt.

This was a welcome change in programming—or so Manto thought until he heard an old woman’s coarse, lilting voice emitting from the black box.

Despite the afternoon heat, Manto felt an involuntary shiver down his spine as the radio carried Beulah Shah’s words into the Trunk Bay parking lot.

The Amina Princess had suffered through several hours of pushing, prodding, and frightening confusion before finally being bundled onto a small ferryboat and transported with several other new slaves to a small mountainous plot on St. John, where the ill-favored son-in-law of a St. Thomas planter was struggling to set up a fledgling sugar plantation.

Set in the steep hills above Maho Bay, the property was
perhaps one of the worst-suited plots for sugarcane production on an island that sported several contenders for the title. The land was covered with a thick vegetation of jujube, mampoo, and tantan, the combined root structure of which had not done much to break up the rocky volcanic soil. The hapless son-in-law knew next to nothing about agriculture, and his new bride was quickly losing patience with his ineptitude.

The Princess couldn’t yet understand the language of these pale unhappy people, but she knew enough of human nature to predict that both the union and this poorly conceived enterprise were unlikely to succeed.

This island was a wicked place, the Princess soon decided.

Her native sun had been replaced by a demonic imposter, one which boiled the air’s dense humidity. What little breeze filtered inland carried a damp moisture that caused her joints to stiffen and swell. Her fingers had never felt so thick, so heavy. Her body was constantly covered with a sticky, stinking layer of sweat.

At the end of each day, the Princess lay down on her designated mat, a dusty bed on the floor of the lean-to shelter that was now her home. Tucked beneath the trees on the slope of a hill, the meager structure provided little protection from either the elements or the pestilence of insects that populated the island.

The Princess ran her hand up and down the surface of her shin, her fingers counting the welts. Thankfully, the number had begun to decrease. At last, the microscopic beasts were starting to lose their appetite for her golden brown skin.

As she waited patiently for the rest of the small farm’s inhabitants to drift off to sleep, her hand slipped up to her neck, instinctively searching for the iron medallion. With the edge of a fingernail, she traced the absent circular shape on the flat canvas at the top of her chest. The amulet’s intangible force was still with her. Somehow, its presence had followed her to this miserable island.

The Princess risked a quick glance at the other women in the shack. Her fellow sufferers were a wide range of ages; their haggard faces represented an array of declining mental states. Some had been so beaten and traumatized in their travels to this remote island, they could no longer bear to remember their African roots. They refused to talk about their origins. Their spirits, she could see, had left them. Others retained scattered fragments of their essence, but it was slowly, inevitably ebbing away from them.