“Where do you think the smuggler sells the emeralds?” Helen asked.
“Miami or New York,” he said. “I’ve been on guard for drugs. I never expected emeralds. I shouldn’t be surprised. The Bahamas are a smugglers’ paradise.”
“Where are the emeralds coming from?” Phil asked. “Colombia?”
“That would make the most sense. I want this person found fast. If the yacht’s boarded by the Coast Guard or searched by the island authorities, it could be impounded.”
“Why would you be searched or boarded?” Phil asked.
“Lots of reasons. Somebody has a bite against the smuggler. Somebody wants a bigger cut. Anything happens and I lose my license and my reputation.”
“But you didn’t do anything,” Helen said.
“Makes no difference,” Josiah said. “I’m in charge. It’s my ship and my responsibility. I want to hire you, Helen, to be the new stewardess. Have you had any experience working in a hotel or as a housekeeper?”
“I was a hotel maid at a tourist hotel here,” Helen said. “I cleaned twenty-eight rooms, seventeen toilets and the honeymoon Jacuzzi each day.”
“Good,” he said. “You have a passport, right?”
“Just got it,” Helen said. She didn’t add that she had a passport, a credit card and a driver’s license since she’d cleared up her troubles with the court. Helen had some things in her past that had to stay buried.
“The owner wants to cruise to Atlantis again,” Josiah said. “We’ll have the same crew. When you work with them, you’ll hear things that I never will.”
“When do you sail?” Helen asked.
“In two days,” the captain said.
“Good,” Helen said. “I’ll be ready by then.”
I’ll spend the next two days trapped in a sad domestic drama, she thought. Then I can pursue a smuggler on a luxury yacht.
Helen could almost taste the sea air—and the adventure.
CHAPTER 6
Stranahan Medical Center was built in the 1950s as a small community hospital. When air-conditioning made the brutal Sun Belt summers endurable, the hospital spread like the tumors it claimed to cure. Stranahan’s main hospital, in downtown Lauderdale, now sprawls over six city blocks and sends its tentacles into the surrounding neighborhoods, turning pleasant family bungalows into cramped Stranahan doctors’ offices. Four more Stranahan hospitals have spread to the city’s richer suburbs.
The medical center is named after Fort Lauderdale settler Frank Stranahan. Its billboards proclaim STRANAHAN—PIONEERING MEDICINE! and feature white-coated, white-skinned male doctors.
The medical center never mentions that Frank Stranahan committed suicide during the Depression, after he lost his money when a real estate deal went sour.
Helen thought poor Frank’s death foretold Fort Lauderdale’s future. Residents continue to try to survive the city’s real estate boom and bust cycles.
Helen parked her white PT Cruiser in the hospital garage, adjusted her prim gray suit and checked that her silver First Communion cross was visible at her neck. Then she picked up her mother’s well-worn Bible and her black video-camera purse and clip-clopped across the pedestrian bridge into the hospital in her sensible heels.
Helen was greeted by a blast of cold air, a medicinal odor and a bored security guard.
“I’m a minister,” she said. “I was told that Mr. Arthur Zerling is gravely ill in the ICU.” On the drive to the hospital, she had carefully chosen her words so she told only the truth. Helen couldn’t bring herself to say that Arthur was in her congregation.
The guard yawned, snapped Helen’s photo and issued an ID badge for Rev. Helen Hawthorne.
“The ICU is on the second floor,” the guard said. “Take the elevator and follow the signs.”
Helen was packed into the elevator with a harried mother and her crying baby, two skinny teenage boys who kept elbowing each other, a staffer in scrubs balancing a container of soup and a large soda, and a worried older woman carrying an African violet. Helen was grateful she had to endure the scents of soup, unchanged diaper, teenage feet and cloying perfume for only one floor.
She dashed out of the elevator and into the ICU. A short, sturdy nurse barred her way. Once again Helen recited, “I’m a minister. I understand that Mr. Arthur Zerling is gravely ill.”
“His wife is with him in Room Two,” the nurse said. “I’ll ask her if you can see him.”
The nurse bustled off on her mission, leaving Helen to get her first look at the couple together. She switched on the video camera in the shoulder strap of her purse and pointed it toward the ICU room. The light was so low, she guessed the Zerlings would be recorded in black and white instead of color.
Helen was shocked by the dramatic change in Arthur Zerling. The vital, vigorous old man photographed on horseback was gone. Arthur had shrunk to a skin-covered skeleton with limp rags of white hair plastered to his skull. Tubes and wires snaked out of his wizened body. A pole hung with six IV bags stood by his bedside like a tree bearing exotic fruit.
Blossom Zerling was reading a Vogue magazine beside her dying husband. She held the magazine on her lap. She’d slipped one arm through the tangle of plastic tubing to hold Arthur’s clawlike hand.
If she was playing a dutiful wife, Helen gave her points for that tender gesture.
When the nurse hurried into the room, Blossom let go of her husband’s hand, gave it a soft pat and greeted the nurse with the smile of someone who expected to be liked. She stood up, towering over the nurse by some six inches. Her crisp white blouse and Escada jeans were well tailored but not tight. Blossom wore her long, glossy brown hair brushed back from her face. Pink lipstick seemed to be her only makeup. She looked like the girl next door—if she lived in an eight-bedroom home.
Prickly, plain Violet was up against a formidable adversary, Helen thought, if Blossom was faking concern for Arthur Zerling.
Blossom tucked the magazine into her pricey Birkin bag and walked briskly out to Helen. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. Her words were softly pleasant and carefully enunciated. “Nurse Abbott says you’re Reverend Hawthorne.”
“You can call me Helen.”
“I’m Blossom Zerling. I know we’ve just met, but could I ask you a favor? Would you sit with Arthur for a little while, please? I live nearby on Hendin Island. I’ve been here at the hospital since six o’clock this morning.”
Eleven hours in that room, Helen thought, then felt a flash of panic. “What if your husband takes a sudden turn for the worse while you’re gone?”
Blossom looked toward her husband’s still form. Helen thought Arthur looked like one of those creepy wax saints in glass cases in old churches.
“The doctor said he could be that way for another day, or a week, or even months,” Blossom said. “His daughter—do you know Violet?”
“Yes,” Helen said. “I’ve met her.”
Blossom sighed. “May I speak to you in confidence, as a minister?”
Something stirred uneasily in Helen. This wasn’t right. She was hired to prove that Blossom was a killer and now the woman wanted spiritual counseling. She nodded yes, unable to say the treacherous word.
“Let’s sit in Arthur’s room a minute,” Blossom said.
Helen took the big turquoise visitor’s chair and put her purse on the windowsill, where the video camera had a clear view of Arthur. Blossom sat on the edge of a small, spindly chair out of camera range. The microphone would still pick up her voice. The blinds were drawn, but Helen could make out Blossom’s earnest face.