I hung on to the canopy to keep from being dumped into the casuarinas when Gator made a hard right. He center-lined the wheel and turned his head to look at me. ‘I know the bastard stole that boat, but what I can’t figure out is why. He’s got more money than God. Or at least his Papa has.’
‘Guys like Jaime learn early on that rules apply only to other people,’ I said. I thought about the special treatment recruited athletes get, even at the Naval Academy where sports weren’t supposed to be as big a deal as they were in the Big Ten. Cocky jocks whose performance on the field was so important to mankind that it couldn’t be interrupted by anything so mundane as class work or exams. Or, if one really got into trouble, jail time. ‘Maybe Papa keeps his little boy on a short leash,’ I added.
Suddenly, the wheels on my side of the cart wobbled off the pavement and dipped into the sand. I made a grab for the wheel, shouting, ‘Eyes on the road!’
Seconds before we might have gone crashing ignominiously into a poisonwood tree, Gator regained control.
When we were safely on the road again, I said, ‘Wanderer might have been abandoned for some reason I don’t even want to contemplate, but barring some dramatic shift in the tectonic plates of the time-space continuum, there’s no way in hell she was all the way down in Eleuthera, not if that cruiser who reported seeing her up in Great Sale a few days ago was right.’
‘Bermuda Triangle?’ Gator snorted at his own joke and gunned the accelerator.
Back in Hawksbill settlement, Gator eased his golf cart into a vacant parking spot near the Pink Grocery and walked back with me to the dock where I’d tied Pro Bono. As I climbed down the ladder and jumped into my boat, he said, ‘I’ll contact the Marsh Harbour police and make sure they know that the Wanderer’s been found.’
‘Thanks, Gator.’
He untied the painter and after I’d started the motor, dropped the rope down to me. ‘Meanwhile, see if you can rustle up anyone on the Net who actually saw Wanderer with the Parkers aboard between Great Sale and here.’
‘Will do.’
‘And, Hannah?’
I looked up, way up, into Gator’s worried, suntanned face. ‘Yes?’
‘Remember what I told you. This is the Bahamas, not Maryland USA. Leave it to the locals. Don’t get involved.’
I pushed Pro Bono away from the piling and pointed her out into the harbor. ‘I’ll try, Gator,’ I shouted to his diminishing figure. ‘It’s not in my nature, but I’ll honestly try.’
THIRTEEN
I’N’I BUILD A CABIN, I’N’I PLANT THE CORN;DIDN’T MY PEOPLE BEFORE ME SLAVE FOR THIS COUNTRY?NOW YOU LOOK ME WITH THAT SCORN, THEN YOU EAT UP ALL MY CORN.WE GONNA CHASE THOSE CRAZY, CHASE THEM CRAZY,CHASE THOSE CRAZY BALDHEADS OUT OF TOWN!Bob Marley, Crazy Baldheads
The next morning on open mike, I asked listeners if anyone had seen Wanderer. My question was met with depressing silence.
The next day it was much the same. Breaking Wind called in to report seeing a vessel named Wanderer anchored in Black Sound up Green Turtle Cay way, but it turned out to be a Hunter, not a Reliant.
On Friday, my last official day as moderator of the Net, my open mike call was returned by an Ericson 38 just returning to radio range after a cruise to Allen’s Pensacola, an uninhabited island to the north and west of us.
‘Windswept, Windswept, this is Northern Star.’
‘Come in, Northern Star.’
‘You’re looking for a boat called Wanderer? A Reliant for-…?’
I was so excited that I stepped on his transmission, depressing the talk button before he had finished. ‘That sounds like the boat, Captain. Over.’
‘About ten days ago, Wanderer was anchored in Poinciana Cove behind Hawksbill Cay. My wife and I dinghied over to invite the owners for cocktails.’
‘Frank and Sally Parker?’
‘Roger. They joined us on Northern Star, stayed for dinner. Frank told me about the work he was doing on behalf of Save Hawksbill Cay. Said he was going to do a couple of night dives. You can’t get a full picture of the health of a reef unless you can see it at night. What fish are out. What they’re eating. Yada yada.’
‘Anyone else in the cove with you?’
‘Nope. Just the two boats. Even for hurricane season, it was pretty empty.’
‘When did they leave?’ I asked with growing dread.
‘They were still there the next morning when we weighed anchor. I don’t think they had any intention of leaving. Frank told me he was planning to testify at a meeting over in Hope…’
‘Sea Wolf, Sea Wolf, Sea Wolf. Come back to Happy Hooker.’
Some fisherman with a more powerful radio and no sense of netiquette was overriding our signal. I waited for Happy Hooker to finish impressing Sea Wolf with the sixty-pound amberjack he’d wrestled aboard his Hatteras, then hailed Northern Star again.
But, Northern Star couldn’t add anything to what he’d already told me. Frank and Sally had been anchored in Poinciana Cove off Hawksbill Cay at the end of July. By the beginning of August they had vanished. It was looking very bleak for my friends.
Had Frank stumbled on something during his dive, something that Jaime Mueller, or someone else in the Mueller family wanted to keep secret?
I thought about all the laws the government of the Bahamas had put in place to control fishing and boating as well as the construction industry, regulations that were sometimes just for show, that could be bypassed if the right amount of money reached the right bank account of the right government official at the right time.
El Mirador Land Corporation had dotted all their I’s and crossed all their T’s. They’d been given a clean bill of health by the big shots in Nassau. As long as they didn’t deviate from their plans and permits, they would be untouchable.
Was El Mirador up to something else, then?
Something worth killing for?
It was clear to everyone involved in the meeting that Frank M. Parker, BS, PhD, SERC Senior Scientist (Retired), cruising sailor, husband and friend, would not be testifying for Save Hawksbill Cay in Hope Town on Wednesday evening. Callers to the Net that morning had wondered if the meeting was still on. Henry Allen, Warden of the Abaco Land and Sea Park, representing himself as well as the Bahamas National Trust, assured everyone that it was. Five thirty. St James Methodist Church. Be there or be square.
The day of the meeting dawned hot, humid and virtually windless, the only breeze ruffling our hair being generated by Pro Bono itself as Paul, Molly and I skimmed along the Sea of Abaco from Bonefish to Elbow Cay.
By day, Hope Town’s signature candy-striped lighthouse served as a landmark, welcoming boaters in; by night, its beacon (which can be seen for seventeen miles) warned them away from a dangerous reef where eighteenth-century locals had supplemented their income by ‘wrecking.’ The village probably looked a lot then as it does today – a quaint, pastel-colored New England fishing village.
Paul successfully negotiated the busy channel at the harbor’s narrow entrance, and managed to snag a prime ‘parking spot’ at the Hope Town dinghy dock well inside the snug, protected harbor.
While Paul made Pro Bono secure, I rooted through my fanny pack. ‘Who has the shopping list?’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘First stop, Lighthouse Liquors. Seems we’ve been running through the Sauvignon Blanc at a fairly fast clip.’