‘Is this true, Henry?’ someone else asked in a more reasonable tone.
Gabriele answered for him. ‘Yes, but Hardin’s credentials are impeccable, and so is his report.’
The guy in the red ball cap wasn’t buying it. ‘Ha!’
Henry raised both hands. ‘Calm down a minute. No need to shout.’
From the back of the sanctuary, Vernon spoke up. ‘What I want to know is what happened to that fellow from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Wasn’t he supposed to testify tonight?’
‘Thanks for asking, Vernon. Yes, he was, but I’m afraid Frank Parker’s been delayed.’
‘If he can’t be here, why don’t we have a copy of his report?’ Vernon wondered.
I elbowed Paul. ‘That’s a good question. Do you think Frank sent a copy of his report to anybody?’
‘Regrettably, we don’t have a copy of his report,’ Henry continued. ‘As some of you may know, we were expecting Mr Parker to speak here tonight, but his vessel is overdue. He and his wife are missing.’
Lots of murmuring agreement from the audience, many of whom had probably been following our efforts to locate Wanderer on the Cruisers’ Net each morning. Some had probably overheard when Northern Star reported a sighting of Wanderer in Poinciana Cove. But there was only a handful of people who knew that Wanderer, the sailboat, had been found without her captain and first mate aboard, and that she was now rechristened the Alice in Wonderland and in Jaime Mueller’s possession.
Winnie stood, shoulders back, arms to her sides. ‘One thing that the El Mirador environmental impact study doesn’t adequately address is the impact that their desalinization plant will have on our island. Have there been any studies on that?’
‘Nothing on the federal level,’ Gabriele admitted. ‘Most of the studies of desalinization have been funded by private business.’
‘Well, we all know how unbiased that would be!’ Winnie’s eyes went on scan, making contact with everyone in the room, who nodded in agreement.
‘We have a state-of-the-art facility,’ Gabriele assured the audience. ‘Please, tell me. What are your specific concerns?’
‘You have to get the water from our sea,’ Gator boomed from the back row. ‘I’m worried about the impact your water-intake pipes will have on the fish, particularly with such a large-scale plant.’
Gabriele managed a straight-lipped response. ‘We have been assured that that isn’t a concern.’
Gator pressed on. ‘In what way isn’t it a concern? Fish will be sucked in through the pipes, isn’t that so?’
‘The pipes will be screened.’
Gator looked up, rolled his eyes, as if seeking patience from the cross. ‘Then organisms will collide with the screen, Ms Mueller. Fish, and smaller organisms, like zooplankton will go right on through.’
‘Wait a minute!’ A suntanned arm attached to a petite islander was waving for attention. ‘Once you take the salt out of the water, Ms Mueller, what are you going to do with it? You can’t tell me that pumping that stuff back into the ocean wouldn’t have an impact on our reefs.’
Gabriele sighed. She’d obviously fielded this question before, and was boring even herself with the answer. ‘The salty sludge will be combined with post-treatment sewage plant effluence and injected into deep wells.’
‘Wait a minute!’ The girl jumped to her feet, bouncing on tiptoes to see over taller heads. ‘Doesn’t the plant run on electricity? And how do you plan to generate that electricity, Ms Mueller?’
‘I’m sure you know that at Tamarind Tree we have our own power generator.’
‘Doesn’t it run on diesel?’ the girl pressed. ‘Doesn’t diesel generate greenhouse gasses?’
‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ the postmistress chimed in without budging from her seat. ‘You just need to use less water! You rich people are spoiled rotten. Can’t live without your bathtubs and your dishwashers. Bet you still run the tap for five minutes while you stand in front of the bathroom sink brushing your teeth.’
‘Well, I’m all in favor of the resort,’ another woman announced from one of the side aisles. ‘I think they’ve been nothing but environmentally responsible and upfront about it from Day One. And my house is adjacent to the Tamarind Tree restaurant.’
A guy wearing a red tropical shirt shot to his feet. ‘Well, of course you’re in favor of it, Arlene. You’re so much in favor of it that you’ve put your house on the market. Isn’t that right?’
To a chorus of that’s rights and uh huhs, Arlene sucked in her lips and sat down.
‘Your father promised he’d hire Bahamians,’ Mr Red Shirt continued, addressing Gabriele. ‘All I’ve ever seen around the place is foreigners. Damn Haitians and those boys from that fancy college in Florida.’
‘He is hiring Bahamians, Alvin,’ Arlene grumbled from her seat. ‘My son is working as a supervisor for one of the contractors.’
‘OK, Arlene. You just ask your boy how many of his workers are Bahamian. Go on, I dare you. I hear there’s nothing but Mexicans over there.’
‘We work exclusively with Bahamian contractors,’ Gabriele assured him using her best anything-to-appease-the-natives tone. ‘But to be perfectly honest, we have little control over the people that our contractors hire, including the various subcontractors, so if you have any issues with the make-up of our contract workforce, you’ll have to take them up with the individual contractors.’
I thought about the lovely waitress who had brought me my iced tea the other day. That’s one Bahamian. I was trying to come up with a second Bahamian when Winnie shouted in exasperation, ‘And another thing! Who has been stealing our signs?’
For the first time that evening, Gabriele Mueller wrinkled her flawless brow. ‘What signs?’
‘Our protest signs.’
‘I don’t know anything about that, but surely you aren’t suggesting…’
‘That’s exactly what I’m suggesting!’
‘I’ll look into it.’ Gabriele raised her hands in an attitude of surrender. ‘Look, we’re not hiding anything. If any of you are still skeptical, please, come see us. I’m issuing an open invitation to all of you. Come visit, tour the facilities. I am speaking for my father when I say we are committed to keeping the Tamarind Tree Resort and Marina as environmentally safe as possible. You have my promise on that.’
‘They think that if they promise to take our garbage away, we’ll fall all over ourselves to welcome them,’ Molly muttered to the guy sitting on her right.
‘Money talks, and we have no money,’ he grumbled back.
While Troy Albury gave an update on the legal efforts of Save Guana Cay Reef to halt the Baker’s Bay Development on his tiny island, I stared at the aerial photo that remained on the screen following the conclusion of Henry’s presentation. Troy was giddy with the news that the Privy Council had agreed to hear the case they had filed against both the developer and the government of the Bahamas, but I was more interested in Henry’s slide. It showed the pier at Tamarind Tree Resort as it was now, undergoing repair. Something was bothering me about it. When the meeting broke up and everyone was gathering on the church steps to analyze and dissect it, I pulled Henry aside. ‘Henry, do you mind if I look at a couple of your slides again?’
‘Not a problem.’
‘Can you page back to an earlier slide for me?’ Henry picked up the remote and moved backwards through his presentation.
‘No, not that one. Uh, uh. Stop!’ It was another picture of the pier, taken just before the repairs had begun. ‘When was this picture taken, Henry?’
‘That would be two weeks ago, I think.’
‘Can you put that slide next to the last one?’
‘Sure.’ I watched while Henry copied the photograph, paged forward to the final slide, and pasted it next to it. ‘There.’