Adrift on St. John (29 page)

That same dark rainy night, a shirtless man with frizzy brown hair sat on a wooden stool in the center of one of the many elevated tents at the Maho Bay eco-resort.

Jeff’s flat, freckled face bore a clear expression of discomfort. The bare skin on his hairy chest twitched as a young woman danced circles around his stool. The woman’s fluid movements caused her spinning sundress to cast rippling shadows against the tent’s canvas walls.

Hannah reached out to Jeff’s head and teasingly pulled her fingers through the thick tangles of his hair.

Grunting with concern, he shifted his weight, tilting his head away from her hand. “Nobody said anything about a haircut,” he muttered grimly.

Giggling shyly, Hannah raised a pair of cordless battery-powered shears and flicked the handle’s on switch.

Jeff flinched at the subsequent buzzing hum. His hands clenched the rim of the stool as Hannah carefully brought the shears in toward his wild mass of hair. The approaching vibration tickled his ear, and he jerked his head away once more.

“I can’t…” he said, shaking his head. The typically
immobile contours of his face twisted into a pleading hound-dog expression.

Hannah turned off the shears and bent down in front of him. Her voice was calm and soothing as she lightly touched his knee.

“You want to captain your own boat, don’t you?”

Jeff blew out a frustrated sigh; his shoulders sagged in defeat. He nodded and closed his eyes submissively.

The shears returned to life as Hannah brought the tip to the nape of Jeff’s neck. With quick, upward, sweeping motions, she began running the razor’s head along his scalp.

Large frizzy clumps soon floated through the air, falling like New England snowflakes as they drifted down to the tent’s wooden floor.

Crouched in the forest outside, an elderly woman watched the pair through a back window screen. Beulah Shah’s wizened face pinched with thought as the pile of hair beneath the stool continued to grow.

36

I staggered outside the condo Monday morning, grumpy, hungover, and decidedly out of sorts. The bright sun beat a hammering blow through my aching head, a painful reminder of the bottle of Cruzan I had finished off the night before.

It had been two nights now with no sign of Jeff. I had done enough snooping around the dive shop to confirm that Saturday’s sunset charter had been a fiction. No one had seen him since he returned from the weekly trip to Jost Van Dyke. He had simply disappeared.

I’d spoken to one of Jeff’s dive shop buddies, a soppy blond-haired guy named Rick, who had taken his last sailing shift for him. It had been a particularly disturbing conversation—during which Rick had luridly insinuated that he would be happy to fill in for more than just Jeff’s dive shop duties. I had resisted the urge to slap him.

Around the resort, no one thought Jeff’s departure particularly unusual. The lower-level dive shop employees were transitory types, and he had been here longer than most. With his nautical classifications, he could take his credentials anywhere in the Caribbean. Dive shops were always looking for capable hands.

Likely as not, most reckoned, he would pop up in some other beach town in a few days’ time. Not that anyone would likely ever know one way or the other—among islands, even thirty miles of ocean translated into a significant geographic barrier.

So far, I was unconvinced of this reasoning. Jeff wasn’t the typical wandering deckhand, I thought with frustration as I sulked my way toward the coffee cart in the reception area.

At least, I didn’t want to believe that he was.

A part of me, of course, realized that perhaps this was just Jeff’s way of ending our relationship. Ours had been one of wordless commitment, a dating arrangement whose meaning was subject to evolving interpretation. I had never pressed the point, and he had never vocalized his feelings.

I had always known that I wouldn’t have him forever—the difference in our ages guaranteed that. But, like my stolen time here on the island, I had been desperate to extend that franchise for as long as possible.

I wasn’t quite yet ready to concede defeat—on either count.

Still mulling over the puzzle of my missing boat boy, I plucked a foam cup from the reception area’s dispenser and began filling it. As I lifted the steaming cup toward my nose and took in a deep whiff of the pungent liquid, a man’s voice trickled into my periphery.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said affably. “I was hoping you could settle a dispute we’ve been having.”

“I’ll do my best,” Hannah’s pleasant, cheerful tone replied.

The coffee kiosk was pushed up against a column, and the concierge desk—where Hannah was apparently stationed—was positioned on the opposite side.

Mere proximity to Hannah rankled my already sour disposition. The finest coffee in the world couldn’t coax me to stand there any longer than necessary. But I figured I’d get
at least one refill before Hannah—the still maddeningly unexplained, Slave Princess–impersonating Hannah—drove me from the coffee kiosk.

“This Slave Princess everyone’s been talking about. They say she hangs out at Maho Bay.”

Slurping down the burning hot coffee, I tilted my head around the side of the column to get a peek at the concierge counter. The man posing this offbeat question was one of the many real estate lawyers staying at the resort.

“I’ve been all over the island this last week,” he continued. “I have to say—it seems to me, if I were going to do myself in by jumping off a cliff, I’d pick Ram Head. That place has the best cliff overhang I’ve ever seen.”

“I hope you’re not planning to test this theory,” Hannah said with a gracious smile.

The lawyer persisted. “I’m starting to think maybe this Maho Bay business is just a ruse.” He pointed his finger at his companions. “To scare off us real estate types.”

Smart fellow, I thought, nearly spilling coffee down the front of my shirt in my eagerness to eavesdrop on the conversation.

“The Princess does have a connection to Ram Head,” Hannah replied diplomatically. “But it was at the beginning of the revolt, not the end. They say she and the other Amina met on the cliffs—the evening of the revolt, after the initial slaughter was completed. The rebels reportedly had a hideout up there. From that angle, you can see the entire southern half of the island.”

She glanced back toward the coffee stand, and I had the sudden impression that she was just as much aware of my presence as I was of hers.

Her voice lowered conspiratorially as she leaned toward the lawyer. “But I can assure you, the locals swear her ghost haunts the grounds of the eco-resort up at Maho Bay.”

The lawyer chortled loudly. “Well, then I hope she likes company. We’re going to build a huge resort on that property.”

37

Late Tuesday afternoon, the clouds were still hanging low over St. John.

The constant gray drip had begun to dampen the spirits of the island’s vacationers. While the rain was good for the island’s fragile ecosystem and cistern supplies, it was a bust with visiting tourists. The intermittent electrical outages of the last few days hadn’t improved the overall temperament.

Vivian stood on the resort’s dock, a tented poncho hanging from her sturdy shoulders. She stared stolidly out into the bay, one hand gripping the handle of a bright-colored umbrella, the other wrapped around her ever-present clipboard.

Beside her, the staff of designated greeters awaited the afternoon arrival of the resort’s double-decker powerboat from St. Thomas. The shuttle service transported guests directly from the airport to the resort’s pier, bypassing the public ferry taken by other travelers.

A dozen tiny plastic cups filled with a cheap rum cocktail waited on a tray, ready to hand out to passengers as they stepped off the boat. The ship was running a little later than usual, given the delays of the incoming flights
and the rough water in the Pillsbury Sound. The ice cubes had begun to melt, raising the liquid’s volume dangerously close to the rims.

Vivian didn’t mind the cooler temperatures, she reflected as the drip intensified against the outer surface of her umbrella, but even she had to admit that their guest-greeting routine was much better received on a sunny afternoon. The palm-tree-lined beach and half-acre swimming pool lost much of their tropical aura when shrouded in cold cloudy rain. This kind of weather, she knew from experience, brought out the worst in new arrivals.

Vivian checked her watch and, with a sigh, pointed toward the pavilion at the end of the dock. Her relieved staff immediately moved under its cover. If they were about to receive a boatload of cranky guests, they might as well be dry.

When at long last the boat pulled into the bay, the rain had accelerated to a full-on downpour. As soon as the rigging was secured to the pier, the first guests began hurrying down the metal gangplank, sprinting for the pavilion’s overhead cover.

The computer programmer was the last to disembark. Carrying a canvas toolbox and a roll-around suitcase, the large man stepped carefully onto the temporary walkway, as if unsure of his footing. Despite the heavy rain, he took his time walrusing his hefty mass down the dock. He was thoroughly soaked by the time he reached the pavilion’s protection.

Dourly, Vivian offered him a plastic cup filled with a now watery concoction of rum and punch. “Welcome to St. John,” she said stiffly.

Cracking a weary smile, the computer programmer waived off the cocktail. He remembered the assistant manager from his last visit to the resort—four and a half years ago—but, just to be sure, he tilted his round head to read the printing on the tag pinned to her shirt.

“Nice to see you again, Vivian.”

With a grunt, she checked the last guest off on her clipboard: Howard Stoutman. The man had used a different name the last time they’d met, but she’d recognized his large bulky form immediately.

“I see you’re here to set up our wireless Internet,” she confirmed tensely. “You’ll need access to the main circuit boards. They’re mounted to the wall in the storm cellar beneath the administrative building. I’ll take you down first thing in the morning.”

Her sharp eyes summed up his sizeable girth. “It’s rather close quarters in there,” she added pointedly, “in case you don’t remember.”