Don’t get involved. The same advice I’d received from Mimi, but still I said, ‘You’re kidding me.’
Gator shrugged. ‘It’s happened.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘You keep your mouth shut.’
Hannah Ives keeping her mouth shut. If Paul had been there, he’d have been laughing hysterically.
Perhaps it was the Anglophile in me, but I tended to trust organizations with the word ‘royal’ in their titles, organizations like ‘The Royal Bahamian Police Force.’ That said, I hadn’t exactly been dazzled by the notices I’d read about the outfit on the Abaco tourist blogs. Consider this: Police have few emergency vehicles, streets and houses are unmarked, so the best thing to do when you are a crime victim is go to the police station nearest you and provide transportation to the crime scene. CSI it wasn’t.
‘If I knew anything, I’d certainly tell you,’ Gator had concluded before powering off with Justice and some tourists for an all-day, two-tank dive on Fowl Cay.
And I had to be satisfied with that.
As if to compensate, it had been happy days on the Net. No email emergencies except the good kind – a baby granddaughter for the couple anchored behind Scotland Cay on Always Something - and lost-and-founds with happy endings.
A boat cat answering to Marmalade had gone missing after an altercation with a local potcake, but had turned up the following day snacking happily on conch bits behind George’s conch salad stand next door to the Harbour View Marina on Bay Street. It’s a troubling thought, but more people were worried and out searching for that cat than cared about whoever it was who had burned to a crisp on the preserve.
Happily, the wildfires were out.
The weather continued happily, too. Sunny, highs in the eighties, chance of widely scattered thunderstorms.
And, ugly as it was, every cruiser seemed to share a we’re-all-in-this-together camaraderie as we watched our stock portfolios go up and down like an Episcopalian in church.
Like I said, it was Same-Old-Same-Old on the Net, until the morning Tony Sands called in on open mike.
I was taking calls as usual.
‘Sea’s the Day, I hear you. Stand by. Anyone else?’
‘Reel Time’ I hear you, too. Stand by. Anyone else?’ When no one else spoke up, I continued. ‘Nothing heard. Go ahead Sea’s the Day.’
Brian Jones on Sea’s the Day was a new arrival to the Abacos and needed to know where to get a haircut (Lanie’s Cuts and Curls in Memorial Plaza), and where to find an ATM that dispenses US dollars. (As if!) With Brian half satisfied, I moved on to Tony.
‘Reel Time, go ahead Tony.’
We knew Tony fairly well. A charter fishing boat captain operating out of Man-O-War Cay, he’d taken Paul deep-sea fishing, but the only fish Paul ever landed was a thirty-pound barracuda. Not particularly edible, but it made a great picture. At least his colleagues back at the Academy were impressed.
‘I’m looking for the sailing vessel Wanderer,’ Tony broadcast, ‘a Reliant 41, green hull, three days overdue from Lake Worth, Florida. Wanderer is skippered by Frank Parker. His wife, Sally, is also aboard.’
My head swam. We knew Frank and Sally Parker! I took a deep, steadying breath and tried to remember what, as Net anchor, I was supposed to say next. I tried to keep my voice neutral as I pressed the talk button and repeated Tony’s announcement in case anyone missed it. Meanwhile, I was gesturing frantically to Paul with my free hand. As I spoke, I watched Paul’s expression change from surprise to worry.
‘Anyone seen the vessel Wanderer, a Reliant 41, come now,’ I said. The airwaves were heavy with silence as I waited hopefully for someone to call in with a positive sighting. I hated having to say, ‘Nothing heard.’
‘Is there anybody in range of Green Turtle Cay who can relay for the Net?’ I asked.
Knot Hers volunteered, and I listened again as the message about Wanderer was repeated, but again, the only response was a disappointing silence.
I tried not to worry as I hurried through a recap of the weather, completely skipped the trivia question (trivial, under the circumstances) and wound up the Net.
‘If there’s nothing further…’ I took my thumb off the talk button and waited. ‘Then the Net is clear.’
I slotted the mike into its cradle, leaned back in my chair and sighed. ‘Frank and Sally. Dear God, I hope they’re OK.’
While I had been wrapping up the Net, Paul had powered up his laptop. Now he looked up from the screen. ‘I’ve got Frank’s cellphone number here somewhere.’ He tapped a few keys. ‘After Frank retired, he and Sally were supposed to be cruising the Intracoastal. Why is Tony looking for them, I wonder?’
Paul crossed to the radio and picked up the mike, still hot and sweaty from where I’d been clutching it for almost an hour. ‘Reel Time, Reel Time, this is Windswept. Come back.’
The airwaves crackled. ‘Reel Time here, Paul. Switch and answer seven three?’
‘Seven three.’
‘Tony, what’s up?’ Paul asked after the connection was made. ‘I know Frank Parker. He used to teach oceanography at the Naval Academy, went on to consult for the Smithsonian’s environmental research center south of Annapolis. What’s he doing in the Abacos?’
‘You know the meeting in Hope Town on Wednesday?’
‘Right?’
‘Parker was going to testify on behalf of Save Hawksbill Cay.’
‘If the government didn’t believe Jean Michael Cousteau, what would make them believe Frank Parker?’
‘Parker has contacts at the University of Florida. They were refuting the claims of the environmental impact statement made by Mueller’s so-called experts. Parker’s not being paid – the scientists who wrote that report are on Mueller’s payroll – so he’s got no personal interest in the project.’
‘Do you know what Parker was going to say?’
‘That the project is an environmental catastrophe.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Well, it’s true.’
‘When did you hear from Parker last?’
‘Tuesday. He’d made the crossing and had put down his hook in Great Sale.’
The crossing. I knew that meant Frank and Sally Parker had successfully crossed the Gulf Stream from Florida, a voyage not to be taken lightly if the weather isn’t favorable. While Paul talked, I consulted the map we had taped to the side of the refrigerator. With my finger, I followed the chain of islands west from Hawksbill Cay. I found Great Sale Cay easily, almost due north from Grand Bahama. From the air, it looked like an anchor.
I knew you could sail from Great Sale to Allens-Pensacola in a day. From there to Green Turtle was another day, and if the weather was right – and it’d been nothing but fine, wind speed and direction-wise, for the past week – the trip from Green Turtle through the Whale Passage to Hawksbill couldn’t have taken more than a day. So, according to my calculations, for the whole trip I’d say three, four days, max.
When I turned back to the radio, Paul was saying, ‘Maybe they’re just taking their time?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Tony replied. ‘Last time Parker telephoned, he said he’d see me on Thursday and pop a Kalik. It’s not like him not to call if he ran into any trouble or changed his plans.’
‘I have to agree. Not like him at all. At the Academy he was always the first to turn his grades in. Not like Sally, either. She’s a friend of my wife’s going way back.’
That was the truth. Sally was the organizer’s organizer, the woman who was living proof of the saying, ‘If you want something done, find the busiest person you know.’ It was Sally who engineered my post-surgery, post-chemo dinner brigade. Every day for six weeks, someone from the Naval Academy Women’s Club had showed up on my doorstep at five thirty sharp, holding a hot casserole in her oven-mitted hands.