Troubles in Paradise

by Elin Hilderbrand

  “Permission to board?” Irene says.

  Any given moment can hold an infinite number of thoughts, Irene realizes. She wonders if he’ll tell her to buzz off, that he’s found someone new, Agent Vasco, that Irene has been replaced, sorry. She wonders if she’ll have to cajole her way onto the boat by telling Huck she has finally learned the whole story from none other than Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was the woman in the black Jeep with the tinted windows. How will he feel hearing it confirmed that Todd murdered Rosie and Russ? How will it feel to know that Oscar Cobb, of all people, had tried to save Rosie’s life?

  Irene travels back in her mind to the first time she ever saw Huck, which was nearly in this exact same spot. She didn’t know him, he didn’t know her, but somehow, somehow, she’d broken down his defenses or piqued his curiosity, and they became friends. More than friends. It was a long shot, Irene thinks, maybe even a miracle. Out of this whole ugly tale of deceit and betrayal, something pure and true was born.

  As unlikely as it might be, the friendship is genuine.

  Slowly, maybe even hesitantly, Huck spreads his arms. “Permission granted, AC.”

  The rope; her shoes. When one boards a boat, there is a protocol. But in the moment, Irene doesn’t care. She jumps—and Captain Sam “Huck” Powers catches her.

  St. John

  April turns to May, and our high season officially ends. Rates at the hotels and villas drop, restaurants close one night a week to give their staff a much-needed rest, there are finally parking spots at both Trunk Bay and Oppenheimer—and it’s hot, hot, hot.

  We also get to see one another more frequently. Did you hear?

  Douglas and Paulette Vickers are going to prison for money laundering and fraud. Douglas will serve three years; Paulette, five. Their son, Windsor, is living with Douglas’s sister, Wilma, on St. Croix. He cried every night for a month, Wilma tells her friend Sadie on St. John, and then one day the crying stopped and now he’s the same sunny child he was before. He’s doing well in school, making new friends, asking for second helpings of dessert (which Wilma always gives him, poor, sweet child).

  Ayers Wilson is showing a subtle baby bump. She has been to two prenatal appointments at Schneider Hospital and has had all the testing. She and Baker have decided not to find out the gender of the baby; all they care about is that the baby is healthy. Ayers is due September 23. She has opted to stay in her cottage, Pure Joy, until the baby is born. She and Baker are now dating, but they haven’t quite reached “boyfriend and girlfriend” status. Maybe soon, Ayers thinks.

  Ayers’s parents, Phil Wilson and Sunny Ray, are the proud owners of a two-bedroom time-share at the Westin; they’re banking their weeks for when the baby comes. They arrive back from a seven-stop jaunt through the Caribbean—Bequia was their favorite, no surprise there—and immediately start planning a summer trip to Croatia. (Everyone raves about the city of Split.) Sunny decides that, instead of pretending to write a travel blog, she will write a travel blog. She calls it Love, Mimi. The blog takes an epistolary form; the entries are descriptive, evocative travel letters from grandmother to grandchild. As soon as Sunny’s Caribbean letters are posted, she receives sponsorship from the AARP and Road Scholar.

  Things are happening over on Lovango Cay (which was named for a region of Africa, not because a brothel there in the days of piracy had been so popular that the island was dubbed “Love and Go”). The cay has been approved for fifty bungalows, fifteen glamping tents, fourteen private homes, a restaurant, and a beach club with a swimming pool that will offer daily, weekly, and season passes.

  Swan Seeley has been hired to handle the resort’s marketing strategy, but when she saw the architect’s plans, she feared she’d be fired. They don’t need Swan to sell this place; it will sell itself. The design is ingenious—the eco-friendly resort will be the hottest spot in the Caribbean! Swan feels incredibly blessed to be part of it. She’d thought her life was over with the divorce, but she was wrong. The curtain is rising on her second act.

  Swan is collaborating closely with both Tilda Payne, who works at La Tapa, and the guy who bought the island, Duncan Huntley. Duncan and Tilda are a couple; they walk around all googly-eyed, holding hands. He calls her mate (he calls everyone mate); she calls him Stallion, which is almost more than Swan can handle. They treat Duncan’s dog, Olive, a harlequin Great Dane that is the size of a show pony, like their child. They speak to Olive in baby talk; they constantly fret over whether Olive is hungry, thirsty, or tired, even though Olive is as chill as an ice sculpture.

  One morning, Swan and Duncan are alone in the air-conditioned work trailer at the slanted drafting table reviewing Swan’s marketing plan. Swan worked hard on the plan; she included ideas for Lovango resort merchandise that they could sell at the gift shop. She went so far as to sketch cute logos for the T-shirts—every woman Swan knows would pay good money for a flattering T-shirt or tank to wear over her Lululemons—and she created a list of local artisans whose work they can feature. She’s hoping to impress Duncan. When she Googled him, she found out that he’d started two companies—a sex app and an edible marijuana concern—that he’d then sold, the first for eight figures, the second for nine. In addition to a whole bunch of money, he has a very appealing Australian accent.

  Duncan glances at the T-shirt designs and then shuffles them aside.

  Swan says, “Merch might be more important than you think because it serves as a source of revenue and a form of advertising. Have you ever heard of the Black Dog on Martha’s Vineyard?”

  Dunk blinks at her and brings his vape pen to his mouth. His eyelids seem a little heavy and she wonders if he has marijuana pods in his vape pen.

  “No,” he says.

  “It’s a restaurant,” Swan says. “They have clam chowder and other New England specialties, but their T-shirts are what’s making them millions. Millions! It’s just a silk screen of a black dog, but that’s part of the mystique. If you know, you know.” She lifts her favorite design, a logo with the words LOVE AND GO. REPEAT. “This has potential, I think? I mean, if you don’t mind propagating the myth of how Lovango got its name?”

  “Propagating?” Duncan says. A smile oozes across his face. He’s definitely high. Or maybe just creepy; Swan can’t tell. Either way, he’s one of her bosses. He owns the island. “Are you smart, Swan?”

  Swan flinches. He’s joking, right? And if she acts offended, he’ll think she’s rigid and humorless. “I am,” she says pleasantly. “Which is why you hired me.”

  Duncan leans in so that the side of his body presses into the side of Swan’s body. “I hired you because you’re a hot little bird,” he says. “A dime.” His hand snakes up her back. He’s touching her back. Swan holds her breath and thinks, What do I do? He hired her because she’s hot? She isn’t an underwear model!

  She straightens up so that Dunk’s hand slides off her back. “Smart and hot,” she says. She points to the next page of her plan. “I made a list of influencers that we should invite to the property. Market research shows that influencers are worth more bang for our buck than regular print advertising—”

  “Bang for our buck,” Dunk says. “Now you’re talking.” He stands behind Swan and starts to massage her shoulders. His groin grazes her backside.

  Nope, sorry, this is not okay. Swan twists away, gathers up her papers, and storms out of the trailer, stumbling into the searing-hot sunshine. There’s a picnic table in the shade of the rocky path where the workers eat their lunch. Swan sits on the table with her feet on the bench seat and tries to steady her breathing. Did she overreact? Is she being too sensitive? No, she decides. That was classic #MeToo stuff back there. Swan shouldn’t have agreed to meet with Duncan alone. But why is she blaming herself? She should be able to meet with whomever she wants under whatever circumstances without being touched inappropriately and told that she was hired because she was hot.

  Her eyes sting with tears. She had been so happy to land this job, but she knows s
he can’t stay on. She has a degree from Florida State, a business degree.

  She doesn’t want to cry. She put a lot of effort into her makeup today, not to lure Duncan or anyone else but because she wanted to look professional.

  “Hey,” a voice says. “You okay?”

  It’s Tilda, walking off the dock with Olive at her side.

  Before Swan can think it through, she says, “I was just in the trailer showing Duncan my marketing ideas. He told me he hired me because I was hot, a dime, and then he touched me inappropriately.”

  Tilda’s eyebrows shoot up above her sunglasses. She places a hand on Olive’s back, and Olive stands still as a statue. When Tilda opens her mouth, no sound comes out.

  Swan drops her head into her hands. On top of everything else, she has to be the one to let Tilda know that her boyfriend is a predator.

  “Oh, Swan,” Tilda says. “Do you think maybe you misunderstood? Dunk can be a little familiar, that’s his personality, that’s how he was raised back in Australia, I think, but I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”

  This is so textbook! Nobody ever believes the woman! “Listen to me, Tilda. He leaned against me in a suggestive way and put his hand on my back, and when I moved away, he started to massage my shoulders. He…grazed my behind.”

  “Swan,” Tilda says. She’s shaking her head when she should be either hugging Swan or storming into the trailer to kick Dunk in the nuts.

  “Tilda,” Swan says. She understands denial. Swan willfully ignored her husband’s gambling problem for fourteen years. But how about some solidarity here?

  “I’ll ask Keith to run you back to Cruz Bay,” Tilda says. “Thanks for coming over.”

  Irene Steele and Captain Huck Powers are living together, and Irene is back working as the first mate on the Mississippi. Irene is logging her days on the water, and as soon as she has three hundred and sixty, she’ll take her captain’s test. Huck thinks it’s a great idea. He even goes to St. Thomas to look at the boat Irene inquired about.

  The boat is in good condition and the seller is motivated; he’s leaving the Virgin Islands altogether at the beginning of June. Huck advises Irene to make an offer of forty thousand.

  “I don’t have forty to spend,” she says.

  “How about we split it?” Huck says. “Add it to the fleet. It needs work, which I can do myself. And then once you get your captain’s license, we can run two boats, the Mississippi and the Angler Cupcake. God knows we have enough business.”

  More than enough, Irene thinks, with a growing number of women-only charters. All it took was a few complimentary trips. The first of these was for Baker’s school-mom friends Swan, Bonny, and Paula. The three of them took pictures with the fish they caught and posted them on Facebook and Instagram. Next, Huck and Irene invited Joanie’s mom, Julie Judge, and her three sisters out on the boat, and they all posted pictures. And finally, they had a paying charter for a young woman named Gretchen Gingerman who came with her mother. It turned out that Gretchen had met Cash on her previous visit to St. John, a trip that had gone badly, and it was only because of Cash that Gretchen gave the island another try, with a different travel partner.

  Gretchen’s post brought in a flurry of business, including a bachelorette party. Six beautiful young women, five in matching pink T-shirts and one in a white T-shirt and a short white veil, all in great spirits thanks to a thermos filled with cosmo punch and a playlist of Lizzo and Billie Eilish. They caught a couple of small wahoo, which elicited high-pitched shrieks, and they took fifty million pictures, including one with Irene. All of the girls loved Irene, she was “such a beast,” and when they were older they were going to do something “sick” like move to the Virgin Islands to work on a fishing boat.

  The bachelorette party tipped extremely well but when the women got off the boat, Huck turned to Irene and said, “I can’t wait for you to get your captain’s license so I never have to do that again.”

  It all sounds rosy on the Huck-and-Irene front—until the story that united them rears its ugly head. Todd Croft is brought up on four charges of first-degree murder thanks to the evidence that Marilyn Monroe presented. (In addition to the three murders we all suspected he was behind, we learned Todd had also killed Oscar Cobb. Sure enough, once Marilyn Monroe had voiced her suspicions, traces of Oscar’s blood were found all over the stern of Bluebeard.) Somehow Todd’s lawyer cuts a deal. Todd pleads guilty to one charge of second-degree murder and three charges of manslaughter and pays fines of nearly four hundred million dollars. He’s sentenced to twenty-two years in federal prison. With good behavior, he could be out in eighteen.

  Both Huck and Irene are aghast. Four lives violently snatched away, and the guy gets only twenty-two years? It’s the money, Irene thinks. The territory wanted Todd’s money. Either that or he agreed to talk to the Feds about some of his clients—which may end up getting him killed.

  “I’ll tell you who will be waiting for him the day he gets out,” Huck says. “Me.”

  Irene squeezes Huck’s hand. The estates can sue for reparations in a civil case. Natalie Key is asking for two million dollars on behalf of Russ and ten million on behalf of Rosie. Stephen Thompson has a brother who lives in London, but the brother won’t sue because he wants “nothing to do with the whole sordid mess.”

  Huck and Irene have decided not to even think about the possibility of that money. Instead, they focus on their daily blessings. Irene receives boxes filled with her clothes—most of which she’d forgotten she owned—as well as her books and kitchen implements. When she pulls her food processor out of the box, she says, “The cooking in this house is about to improve.”

  “How can you improve on perfectly grilled fish?” Huck asks. “How can you improve on Candi’s barbecue?”

  Another blessing: Agent Vasco’s job on St. John is finished. She goes back to Puerto Rico.

  Adios, Irene thinks.

  Swan Seeley tells Baker what happened between her and Duncan Huntley, and Baker nearly drives out to the East End to give the guy the thrashing he deserves. When Baker tells Ayers the story, she mentions that Dunk routinely waits for Tilda across the street from La Tapa after service. Baker can jump out of the shadows and scare him to death.

  But then fate intervenes and Baker bumps into Dunk at Pine Peace Market. Duncan is buying vape pods and Baker is buying pizza-flavored Pringles for Floyd and Ben and Jerry’s Red Velvet Cake ice cream for himself. When Dunk sees Baker, he gives him a little bro-nod but it’s clear he can’t really place him. He’s not important enough for Duncan to remember, Baker supposes. He stands behind Dunk in line, glaring at the back of his neck. Duncan seems shorter than he did when Baker met him on the plane, and he’s downright scrawny. What does Tilda see in this guy? Is it just the money?

  Dunk leaves the store and Baker sets his chips and ice cream down and says to Nestor, the cashier, “I’ll be right back.” He follows Dunk out and catches him as he pulls open the driver’s-side door of a forest-green G-wagon.

  “Hey,” Baker says. “Duncan? Dunk?”

  Dunk turns. “G’day.”

  “It’s Baker. Baker Steele? My little boy and I met you on the flight from Houston. You gave me a ride over here on your boat?”

  “Ah, yeah?” Dunk says, though it’s not clear he remembers who Baker is. “How ya doin’, mate?”

  Baker reaches out his hand, and when Dunk takes it, Baker squeezes as hard as he can and holds on a little longer than he should. “I’m good. Real good. Except for a couple of things.”

  “Sorry, mate, wish I could shoot the shit but I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  Dunk makes a move to get into his car but Baker reaches over Dunk’s head and slams the driver’s-side door shut, then leans against the car, arms folded across his chest. He has six inches and at least sixty pounds on Dunk. Baker hasn’t been in a fight since high school, and even then, he mostly scrapped with Cash. He’s thirty-one years old, the father of one with another one on the way.
He never thought he’d find himself trying to physically intimidate someone. But that’s exactly what he’s going to do right now.

  “First off,” Baker says, “you moved in on Tilda when she was dating my brother, Cash.”

  “Cash is your brother?” Dunk says. He laughs nervously. “I didn’t make the connection, mate, I’m sorry.”

  “But you did know Cash and Tilda were together,” Baker says. “When you and Tilda went away, you knew she had a boyfriend. You had dinner with him.”

  “Right, but I wasn’t sure how serious it was,” Dunk says. “She told me they’d known each other only a few weeks. And she said that Cash moved in with her because he had nowhere else to go.” Dunk fiddles with the packet of vape pods in his hands. He’s trying to pop one out. “Your father was part of that whole Ascension thing? That’s some nefarious shit, mate.”

  Baker snatches the pods out of Dunk’s hands and tosses them beyond the truck. He whips the vape pen out of Duncan’s shirt pocket and tosses that too.

  “Nefarious?” Baker says. “Are you smart, Dunk? No, not terribly. Because the next thing you did that pissed me off was you insulted my friend Swan Seeley, told her you hired her only because she was hot—”

  “It was a compliment,” Dunk says. “Show me a bird who doesn’t like hearing she’s hot, come on.”

  “It was inappropriate,” Baker says. “And then you touched her. You leaned into her, you put your hand on her back, you gave her a massage, and you rubbed up against her from behind.”

  “Her word against mine, mate,” Dunk says.

  Baker grabs the front of Dunk’s shirt and pulls him in. Will Baker hit him? He wants to. He would love to pop Duncan Huntley in the face and watch him bleed. “I’m not your mate.”

  Nestor pokes his head out of the market. “You okay?” he asks Baker. “Need any help?”

  “I need help!” Dunk says. “He’s attacking me!”