There was a ripple of laughter around the table.
“Ah, a woman scientist with a sense of humor,” said Isaac Klein, a chemist.
“Dr. Klein, are you saying I don’t have a sense of humor?” Dr. Bennett asked. “I find your scientific papers very funny.”
The good-natured ribbing drew another round of laughter.
Dr. Mayhew said, “Dr. Bennett forgot to mention that the center’s assistant director is a woman as welclass="underline" Lois Mitchell.”
“Will I get to meet her?” Gamay asked.
“Not until she gets back from-” Dr. Bennett caught herself midsentence. “She’s away . . . in the field.”
“Lois is working with Dr. Kane,” Mayhew said. “When she’s here, the island is not as male dominated as might appear at first glance.”
Gamay pretended she hadn’t seen Mayhew gently nudge Bennett’s arm and looked around at the other tables in the room.
“Is this the lab’s entire staff?” she asked.
“This is a skeleton crew,” Mayhew said. “Most of our colleagues are working in the field.”
“It must be a very large field,” she said in a lame attempt at humor.
There was deafening silence.
Finally, Mayhew showed his teeth.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” he said.
He glanced around at the others, who took his comment as a signal to force grins on their faces.
Gamay had the feeling that they were all connected to one another with wires and that Mayhew had the switch in his hand.
“I met another woman on the dock,” she said. “I believe her name was Dr. Lee.”
“Oh, yes, Dr. Song Lee,” Mayhew said. “I didn’t count her because she’s a visiting scientist and not regular staff. She’s extremely shy, and even dines in her cabin by herself.”
Chuck Hallum, who headed the immunology section, said,
“She’s Harvard educated, and one of the most brilliant immunologists I’ve ever met. Speaking of off islanders, what really brings you to Bonefish Key?”
“My interest in marine biology,” Gamay said. “I’ve read in the scientific journals about the groundbreaking work you’ve been doing in biomedicine. I was planning to visit friends in Tampa and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a firsthand look.”
“Are you familiar with the history of the marine center?” asked Mayhew.
“I understand that you’re a nonprofit funded by a foundation, but I don’t know much beyond that,” Gamay said.
Mayhew nodded. “When Dr. Kane started the lab, his initial funding came from the bequest of a University of Florida alumna who had lost a close relative to disease. There were some legal challenges to the will from disgruntled family members, and the funding was about to dry up when he formed a foundation and started attracting money from other sources. Dr. Kane envisioned Bonefish Key as the ideal research center because it would be away from the hubbub of a busy university.”
A bell rang to announce dinner, and they moved into the dining room, the bartender taking over as waiter. The meal prepared by the chef was fresh-caught redfish, with a pecan crust and seared to perfection, washed down with a delicate French sauvignon blanc. Conversation around the table was on the light side, with little talk about the work being done on the island.
After dinner, the scientists moved out onto the veranda and the patio. There was more chatter, almost none of it having to do with the lab. As darkness deepened, most drifted off to their cabins.
“We hit the sack early here,” Mayhew explained, “and we’re up with the sun. We close the bar, so there’s not much action after ten o’clock.”
Mayhew asked Gamay a few more polite questions about her work at NUMA, then excused himself and said he would see her at breakfast. Any remaining staff followed, leaving Gamay alone on the veranda to absorb the sights and sounds of the subtropical night.
Gamay decided to call Paul, and she followed the same path to the water tower that she had taken earlier. The crushed white shells glowed under the brilliant moon. She started up the tower, only to stop in midstep. A female voice was coming from the platform. Speaking in what sounded like Chinese.
The conversation ended after a minute or two, and Gamay heard soft footfalls descending. Gamay backed down the ladder and hid behind a palmetto. She watched Dr. Lee descend the ladder, then hurry off down the path.
Gamay followed the path to the cabins. All were dark except for one, and, as she watched, the light in its window went out. She stood there looking at the darkened cabin, wondering what Nancy Drew would do in a case like this.
She decided to go back to the water tower. There, she left a voice mail on Paul’s phone, saying she had arrived safely, then headed back to her room.
She sat on her screened-in porch and tallied up the impressions of the few short hours she had spent on the island. Her natural powers of intuition had been honed by years as a scientific observer, first as a nautical archaeologist, then as a marine biologist.
She had picked up on Dooley’s suggestion that there was more than meets the eye on Bonefish Key. The man who had mixed her drinks looked as if he had stepped out of the pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Then Mayhew and his people were laughingly clumsy in their attempts to be evasive whenever talk touched on Dr. Kane, the center’s mysterious field project, and the whereabouts of the rest of the staff. She was intrigued, too, by the young Asian scientist who had given her the cold shoulder at the dock, and how Mayhew had conveniently forgotten to mention Dr. Song Lee. And how the other scientists avoided Gamay as if she were a leper.
Austin told her to look for anything funny on the island.
“How about weird, Kurt old boy?” she muttered to herself.
Based on Austin’s standard, Bonefish Key should be a barrel of laughs. But as she sat in the darkness listening to the sounds of the night, Gamay was beginning to understand why Dooley hadn’t smiled when he welcomed her to paradise.
CHAPTER 19
DETECTIVE-SUPERINTENDENT RANDOLPH’S GOOD-NATURED nonchalance was misleading. He seemed to be everywhere at once. He hovered over the forensic experts who photographed the crime scene and collected evidence, listened to the witness interviews for discrepancies, and went over the Beebe with a very large fine-tooth comb.
All he needed to complete the picture was a deerstalker hat and meerschaum pipe.
The detective-superintendent and his team worked late into the night before they took advantage of the temporary sleeping quarters that Gannon had arranged for them. The next day, at Randolph’s request, the captain moved the ship closer to the Marine Police Service station on the mainland. The bodies were transported to the pathology lab for autopsies.
After Austin and Zavala gave their interviews, they cleaned up the bathysphere and inspected it for damage. Except for places where the paint had been scraped away from the unexpected plunge to the bottom of the sea, the doughty little diving bell had come through its ordeal in fine fashion.
Austin wished the same could be said for the Humongous. He supervised the removal of the wreckage by crane from the deck of the Beebe to a flatbed truck, then to a garage on the mainland.
Satisfied that this last piece of major physical evidence was in police hands, Detective-Superintendent Randolph thanked Gannon and his crew for their cooperation and said the ship was free to leave. He said he would handle the questions from the dozens of reporters who were swarming around the station now that word of the attack had leaked out.
Randolph gave Austin and Zavala a ride in his police car to the airport, where the NUMA jet they would travel on to Washington was parked. Zavala was an experienced pilot certified to fly small jets, and by late afternoon he was taxiing the plane up to a hangar at Reagan National Airport reserved for NUMA aircraft. Austin and Zavala then went their separate ways, agreeing to touch base the following day.