Afoot on St. Croix (Mystery in the Islands)

Praise for the
New York Times
bestselling Cats and Curios Mysteries

“Written with verve and panache . . . Will delight mystery readers and elicit a purr from those who obey cats.”

—Carolyn Hart, author of
Ghost Gone Wild

“Quirky characters, an enjoyable mystery with plenty of twists, and cats, too! A fun read.”

—Linda O. Johnston, author of the Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter Mysteries

“[A] wild, refreshing, over-the-top-of-Nob-Hill thriller.”

—
The Best Reviews

“An adorable new mystery.”

—
Fresh Fiction

“[A] merry escapade! It was an interesting trip where nothing was as it seemed . . . If you enjoy mysteries that are a little off the beaten path, ones that challenge you to think outside of the box, this one is for you.”

—
The Romance Readers Connection

Titles by Rebecca M. Hale

Cats and Curios Mysteries

HOW TO WASH A CAT

NINE LIVES LAST FOREVER

HOW TO MOON A CAT

HOW TO TAIL A CAT

Mysteries in the Islands

ADRIFT ON ST. JOHN

AFOOT ON ST. CROIX

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA)

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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AFOOT ON ST. CROIX

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2013 by Rebecca M. Hale.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

BERKLEY
®
PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA).

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA),

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62527-9

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / October 2013

Cover photo by Rebecca M. Hale;
Rocks
from Shutterstock.

Cover design by George Long.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For Elizabeth Berwanger

“There,” said the author, feeling a sense of accomplishment. “I’ve finally got them reunited with their mother—all five chicks.”

The cab driver stroked his chin and leaned forward in his frayed lawn chair. For the last forty-five minutes, he and his colleagues had watched the woman chase the chicks back and forth across the busy intersection.

Shaking his head, he gave the author a sympathetic smile.

“This morning, she had nine.”

Introduction

The Goat Foot Woman

TWO CHILDREN—A
girl
of seven and boy just turned four—played in a gravel courtyard outside the Comanche Hotel in downtown Christiansted. On the ground between them lay a pyramid of empty beer bottles, scavenged from a nearby waste bin. Several dozen pebbles and a few hardened chunks of sun-bleached coral were piled around the base, an effort to prop up the shaky tower.

The children’s mother sat at a picnic table about ten feet away, tensely smoking a cigarette. Despite the day’s humid heat, the woman wore a dark cloak over her sleeveless silk dress. The black material draped loosely over her shoulders and spanned the length of her body, falling all the way to the ground. Only the open-toed tips of her shoes peeked out beneath the fabric’s bottom hem. A scarf made of similar cloth covered her head, leaving the pale oval of her face exposed.

The woman appeared not to notice the encumbrance of the cloak and scarf. Every so often, she glanced across the courtyard to check on her offspring, but for the most part, she kept her focus trained on the sky above the harbor.

•

GREEN EYES SQUINTING,
the young girl wrapped her hand around the neck of a brown bottle and lifted it toward the peak of the unstable heap. The makeshift castle was almost complete—this last topper was all that remained.

The girl’s tongue slipped over her upper lip as she concentrated on the bottle’s wide bottom rim, trying to balance it on the stack.

One by one, she released her tiny fingers.

The heavy glass teetered, wobbling for a long moment, before clattering to the ground.

“
Ay
, Elena, watch
ya’self
,” the mother snapped testily. She rose from her seat at the picnic table, as if she were about to launch into a lengthy scolding, but a distant movement in the sky caught her attention.

Once more staring out at the sea, the woman sucked in another steadying puff from the cigarette, leaving a ring of red lipstick on the smoldering stub. The smoke swilled in her lungs; then she slowly blew out a curling gray plume.

•

THE GIRL ROLLED
her eyes in annoyance. She tossed her head, causing the dark wavy hair tied in her pigtails to swing wildly through the air. Noting her mother’s distraction, she picked up a stone and tossed it at her playmate.

“
Ay
, Hassan, watch
ya’self
,” she said, her voice a perfect imitation of her mother’s.

The boy opened his mouth to protest, but Elena held up a shushing hand. She leaned toward him, a serious expression on her sun-flushed face.

Her words took on a heavy Caribbean lilt as she dropped her voice to a whisper.

“Wat’ch ya’self, leet-le brother,”
she cautioned.
“Special-lee at night. Ya dun wanna bey caught out by duh Goat-foot Wo-man.”

“Who?” the boy asked, dropping the pebble that he had scooped up to throw in retaliation.

Elena drew in her breath with exaggerated surprise.

“Don’ yah know you got-ta wa’ch out for dah Goat-foot Wo-man?”

Hassan shook his head, his expression one of puzzled concern.

Elena slid forward, moving even closer to her brother. Bending to his shorter height, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pointed inland over the hotel’s steep roofline.

“Dah Goat-foot Wo-man, she lives in duh hills abuv Chris’ted. If you leesen, you can hear hur, creaking through duh trees . . . crackeling een duh branches . . . rust’ling through duh leaves . . .”

The little boy cringed, visibly unnerved, but his apprehension only spurred his sister on. Her eyes gleamed as she continued.

“She’s a fright-ful creature, haf hoom-an, haf goat, but you wudd’n know it from seeing hur on dah street. When she comes een-ta town, she hides hur lef’ foot een a beeg floppy shoe—so dat no wone can see duh hoof.”

Hassan squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over his ears. Elena persisted, increasing the volume of her voice.

“Hur spirit’s oldah dan dah jumbies . . . oldah dan dis island . . . oldah dan tyme eet-self.”

She strummed her fingertips across her brother’s shoulders, tapping out an eerie cadence. He tried to shrug away from her grip, but her hand clamped down, pressing through his shirt.

“She wuz here ’fore dah Danes, ’fore dah French, ’fore dah first Spanish slave tradas. She wuz wit duh Car-ib at Salt Reev-ah when Christ’pher Columbus came a-shore.”

Quickly circling around her brother, Elena hunched to her knees in front of him.

“Dah Goat-foot Wo-man, she helped dem Car-ib carve up a man from dat Spanish crew. They strung ’eem up ova a fire an’ cooked ’eem on a stek.”

Concentrating, the girl crossed her eyes, skewed her face into its most grotesque contortion, and luridly licked her lips.

“Tha’s where she first gut duh taste fer hoom-an flesh.”

Elena grabbed Hassan’s hand. Twisting his wrist, she turned his palm upward and traced her fingernail across its sweating surface.

“Evah so often, when she gets a hank’ring, duh Goat-foot Wo-man teks a child home an’ eats ’eem for dinn-a.”

Hassan jerked his arm away from his sister’s grasp.

“No,” he said, his lower lip trembling as he clenched his fist against his chest. “I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, Hassan,” the girl replied in mock horror, instantly dropping the accent. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”

Hassan gulped as his sister looked up and across the courtyard at a shadowed figure in an alley about thirty feet away. When Elena returned her gaze to his, her face was darkly somber.

Returning to her hushed tone, she whispered a grim warning. “She’s listening. The Goat Foot Woman, she’s always listening.”

• • •

AN ELDERLY CRUCIAN
woman crouched in an alley near the Comanche Hotel, watching the children in the gravel courtyard. A thin smile crimped her dusty lips as she listened to Elena’s story.

“She’s gut it ’bout haf right,”
the hag said with a raspy chuckle.

Gripping the handle of a rusted shopping cart piled high with refuse, the old woman hobbled through the courtyard in the direction of the harbor. As she limped past the children’s mound of glass and rubble, she resisted the urge to stop and leer down at the awestruck pair.

But when she reached the edge of the boardwalk on the courtyard’s opposite side, she heard the girl’s voice croak hoarsely to her brother.

“Children ain’ nuttin’ but an appet-tizah.”

Her yellow eyes shining with amusement, the hag turned to look back at the children. Resting a stiff hand on her hip, she shook her head at the girl’s antics.

Just then, the mother crushed out her cigarette on the gravel, scooped up the boy, and grabbed the girl’s hand.

Elena got out one last comment before being dragged off toward the hotel.

Hassan shrieked in terror as his sister hungrily smacked her lips.

“Nuttin’ more dan a snack.”