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While we waited for our pie, I asked, ‘Other than the experts and the folks from Save Hawksbill Cay Reef, who’ll be there?’

‘Officials from Friends of the Environment as well as representatives of the Bahamas National Trust… or so they say. They may just blow us off. It’s happened before.’

I picked up my fork. ‘Do we need to bring persuaders? Machetes? Bahamian slings?’

Henry leaned back in his chair, threw back his head and laughed. ‘No. But hold that thought.’

FIVE

MIAMI, FLORIDA (MAR 5 2008) – SHARK-FEEDING TOURS TO THE BAHAMAS – LIKE THE ONE THAT ENDED LAST WEEK IN THE TRAGIC DEATH OF AN AUSTRIAN DIVER – ALSO POSE A THREAT TO ISLAND VISITORS NOT INVOLVED IN THESE EXPEDITIONS.ONCE A SHARK LEARNS TO ASSOCIATE BOAT ARRIVALS AND/OR PEOPLE IN THE WATER WITH DINNERTIME, THOSE ASSOCIATIONS ARE REMEMBERED FOR A LONG TIME AND TAKEN WITH THE SHARK WHEREVER IT MAY WANDER – A RECIPE FOR DISASTER.Bob Dimond, Cyber Diver News Network

At home, I typed www.savehawksbillcay.com into my browser. I couldn’t believe what popped up on my screen. ‘Meet Susie and her young teen friends! 15,000 pictures online! See Susie take it all off and get it on!’ There was a picture of Susie, too, wearing three strategically placed daisies. She had more friends, lots of friends, if I’d only fill in my age and credit card number.

I stared at the URL, wondering where I’d gone wrong.

I clicked in the search box and retyped my query, this time in quotes. The site I was looking for was savehawksbillcayreef.com. Clearly, someone had hijacked Henry’s URL, wanting to embarrass him. I wonder if he knew.

Putting on my researcher’s hat, I went to Whois, and discovered that the imposter’s URL had been registered only two months ago, to an owner who was clearly fictitious – Arthur Pendragon, 5 Butt Close, Glastonbury, Somerset, BA6, UK. Butt Close! Get real. To my absolute astonishment, however, when I googled the address, there actually was a ‘Butt Close,’ but number 5 was a parking lot.

Whoever he was, I felt like reformatting his hard drive using nothing but a baseball bat.

I decided to get rid of my pent-up frustration by doing something physical, so I spent twenty minutes prowling around in the overgrown lot that separated Windswept from Southern Exposure, turning up old paint buckets, battered boat dock bumpers, a ratty tarp and other tatty treasures. Eventually I found what I was looking for – a perfect, four-by-six sheet of plywood. Not sure whose property the lumber was actually on, I decided to drag it into Molly Weston’s yard – leaving a drunken trail in the sand that would send Daniel scurrying for his rake – and propped the wood up against her generator shed where it could dry out.

The previous day, I’d run into Molly coming out of the post office carrying a grocery sack of mail and a huge parcel with ‘Molly Weston, Bonefish Cay, Abaco, Bahamas’ printed on the side in black Magic Marker.

‘You must be my neighbor, Molly Weston,’ I said.

‘How…?’ Then she blushed. ‘Might as well be wearing a name tag, huh?’

I relieved her of the package, and followed her down to her dinghy. Ten minutes later, we’d bonded instantly over tea and Scottish shortbread on the porch at Windswept.

Now I stood at the end of my new friend’s dock where she’d hung a bronze bell of the sort used by teachers in olden days to call children in from recess. I grabbed the leather thong attached to the clapper and gave the bell a vigorous ding-dong-ding-dong-ding before starting up the sidewalk that led to Molly’s deck.

‘I’m he-ah!’ Molly drawled from somewhere inside the house. ‘Come in!’

I slid the screen door to one side and stepped into a brightly lit kitchen that opened into a pine-paneled living and dining room area offering a spectacular panorama of the sea.

Molly (or some Weston before her) certainly had a knack for interior design. A white wicker sofa and two matching chairs covered with flowered chintz and a scattering of pillows were arranged in a conversational grouping around a pot-bellied stove. Paintings by local artists decorated the walls. On a credenza behind the sofa Molly had arranged a collection of photographs. One, framed in sea shells, was an obvious family grouping. Everyone posed informally, arms draped casually around one another. I was trying to figure out where and when the photo had been taken when Molly entered the room.

‘That’s me at six,’ she explained. ‘With my mom and dad.’

‘You look very tropical. I assume it was taken on Bonefish Cay?’

She nodded, pink lips parted in a wistful smile. ‘A very long time ago.’

In the photograph, a muddy-kneed but otherwise immaculate Molly wore a white pinafore with red rick-rack trim, white ankle socks and white patent-leather Mary Janes. Six decades later, she seemed to favor the same color combination – white clam diggers, a red T-shirt, and white lace-up tennis shoes. Instead of pigtails, though, the grown-up Molly’s hair was cut in a stylish wedge; silver strands feathered attractively over the tips of her ears.

‘I found a sheet of plywood in the woods,’ I said, getting straight to the point. ‘I was wondering if it belonged to you.’

‘Could be. There’s a lot of trash in there. Found a sink once, and a rusted-out water heater.’ She grinned. ‘Where is it?’

‘Down by your generator. Come see.’

When Molly surveyed the plywood a few minutes later, she said, ‘From the nail holes I’d say it’s an old hurricane shutter. Washed ashore. Can you use it?’

‘Do you mind? I promised Winnie I’d find some wood she could use for a replacement “El Mirador Go Home” sign.’

Molly’s blue eyes sparkled. ‘Why shu-ah. Need help?’

‘Thanks. I was wondering how I was going to get it over there.’

‘We can use my Zodiac. It’s a little wider than Pro Bono. And I have bungee cords we can use to strap the wood on.’

I rubbed my hands together briskly. ‘Let’s do it!’

When I get to be Molly’s age – seventy-two – I plan to be as spry and nimble as she. Barely one hundred pounds soaking wet, it was said Molly could single-hand her Zodiac inflatable in the worst of weathers, schlep bags to and from the grocery, and lift items so bulky that even Daniel stood in awe of her. ‘Miz Molly, she work like a Haitian,’ he had commented to me one day. It was a compliment.

By the time Molly and I had wrestled the plywood sheet to the end of her dock, eased it down the ladder, and secured it across the back of her Zodiac like an extra seat, Molly had talked me into a picnic lunch off her favorite beach. ‘If you promise not to tell anybody,’ she cautioned with a grin. ‘Best beach in the world for collecting sand dollars.’

The Zodiac gobbled up the distance between Bonefish and Hawksbill Cays in half the time it would have taken me to single-hand the plywood over in Pro Bono. We delivered the wood to the government dock where, with Gator’s help, we carried it down to the Pink Store and propped it against the bag ice machine. I popped into the store to let Winnie know where to find the plywood, then purchased sodas and chips to go along with the lunch Molly had thrown together. A few minutes later, leaving a rooster tail of water in our wake, we zoomed off in the Zodiac heading for Molly’s secret sand dollar beach.

Wasn’t so secret, as it turns out.

‘Well, hel-lo,’ I said as we neared the shore. ‘Poinciana Cove, if I’m not mistaken. The very view from my porch, except up close and personal.’

Molly let the Zodiac drift to a stop about fifty yards off the beach in eight feet of water. I tied a fisherman’s bend around the anchor rode, then, using the same knot, secured the other end of the rope to a cleat on the Zodiac, tying a couple of half hitches for good measure. When we had drifted well clear of the reef, I tossed the anchor overboard, and watched until it settled to the bottom and bit securely into the sand.