Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 01 - Wendy and the Lost Boys

by Barbara Silkstone

  “Oh no…”

  He punched one fist into the other. “People around the world sent money to that fund. When we needed to buy antibiotics, food, and water, the money was gone. Crime and cholera almost became the rulers of Haiti. Gangs took over in cities. I spent half my time saving lives and the other half taking them.”

  I patted his arm. It felt as cold and hard as stone. Knowing what was coming, I shivered. I could hear the words before he said them. “Prison is no answer for Hook’s crimes. He has money hidden away around the world. He’ll slip through the system. Hook has to die.”

  “Roscoe, don’t say that. It makes you no better than he is.”

  “It makes me no worse. I watched my people perish. Each death was more horrible than the last. I have to finish what I started.”

  “How was Marni involved?”

  She came to the kitchen almost every day. One day, she acted different, as if she could read my mind and knew what I planned.”

  I heard myself asking, “What did you have planned?”

  “Polonium is a convenient way to kill somebody, slowly. It’s doesn’t take but a few particles.”

  That was what Roger called it. “What is that stuff?”

  “Radioactive dust. Think of it as high tech voodoo.”

  “Where would you get something like that?”

  “You can get anything on line.”

  “Marni?”

  “I kept it in a top cabinet in the galley in a spice container, figuring it was safer there than in my quarters. Miss Marni got into it. It’s as simple as that.” His eyes blurred over with tears. “I never meant to hurt her. She was a sweet lady. It was an accident.”

  “Did she climb up and take it down?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. She took sick with stomach pains one day. Hook wouldn’t let anyone near her. The container was on the shelf. I checked it but couldn’t tell if she’d touched it.”

  “What if Hook had flown her to a hospital?”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do for that sort of poisoning once the polonium is eaten or taken into your lungs.” He rubbed his forehead with his huge hand.

  “So the stuff is still on board the Predator?”

  He didn’t respond. I spun through solutions, flipping them aside like dresses in a fitting room. There was no easy answer.

  “Hook could hide at sea and die of old age. I won’t let it happen.”

  A cold tremor hit my body. “Do you have that –”

  “Polonium. I do. Don’t worry. It can’t hurt you. But it will kill Charlie Hook.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Knowing makes me an accomplice.”

  “Because you’ll be haunted until you find the answers. I want someone to know who and why… after I’m gone.”

  My mind was running like a hamster on a high-speed wheel. Where is Roscoe going? If I warn Hook, he’ll have Roscoe killed. I can’t call the authorities for help because of the scrambler.

  I imagined finding Peter on Nevis, kissing him, and telling him I needed his help with keeping a promise and preventing a murder. He would rush to my aid begging my forgiveness for running off and leaving me to grow up alone.

  “Don’t tell the others,” Roscoe said, his voice so deep it vibrated the air around us.

  “What if we can get the treasure back to that fund? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

  “Hook’s treasure can’t be turned into cash. Not by any of us. He has the connections, we don’t. His fortune is useless to us.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of keeping it. We’d give it back to everyone he fleeced.”

  “It’s too late. The door is closing on us. Hook has someone waiting on Nevis to receive his treasure. It’ll be sold to other black market collectors. And the money tucked away in offshore accounts.”

  “This can’t be the way it all comes down. He can’t win.”

  “He’s won’t. I’m going to throw him out like the trash he is.”

  Roscoe hefted himself from the rail, gave me a woeful look, and went below.

  I stared at the moon. This had to be a nightmare. Things like this don’t happen in real life. Marni… done in by your own snooping.

  Kit and Roger needed to know. Maybe Jaxbee already knew. I remembered Roscoe bumping into me as I ran from the bridge just before Captain Henry was killed. How did that fit in? Did he kill Henry?

  ***

  Nevis Island

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Late the next morning, Hook was on a cell phone, his tone angry, and his words unintelligible. The bastard had shut off the scrambler. I wondered about my phone sitting at the bottom of the ocean, along with Kit’s and Roger’s. Could I get onto the bridge and use the ship’s radio to call? Did I know how to work a ship’s radio? No. And how would I deal with Dale?

  We had passed Anguilla without attracting any attention. Moving further off shore, we slipped by Saint Kitts, our cloaking shield in place and motors running silent. The Predator glided through the deep waters to south of Nevis and anchored far off shore. We dropped the shield.

  If I didn’t kick butt soon, I would burst from adrenalin backup. I needed to strangle someone. Instead I sat on the upper deck while Roscoe served us brunch. Just as Darlin’s Dudes began to eat, the sun slipped behind a dark cloud. Three waterspouts joined up and became one giant plume as the island came into view. It felt like God had left the area. A small patch of land about fifty miles west of Antigua, Nevis is conical in shape with a volcano at its center. The sandy beaches are brown and black from ancient lava and frosted with a dusting of crushed white coral. A fantasy island.

  As we ate mango shrimp and jasmine rice, I noticed a few of the crew wandering topside, each carrying a handgun. The air crackled with tension. It’s hard to concentrate on dipping sauce when there’s a Glock dangling near the pitcher of chilled mimosas.

  Roger gave me his patented raised eyebrow and followed Hook below deck.

  I excused myself. Feeling uncomfortable under the watchful gaze of armed preppies, I walked to the starboard railing and gazed at Nevis Island. Peter was there. My Peter Payne. What did he look like now? What was he doing on an island in the middle of nowhere? And why did Roger think Peter was connected to Hook?

  The foliage on the shore looked lovely through binoculars. There were silver buttonwood trees, mangrove thickets, flowering plants and huge coconut palms. I could see a path meandering through pine trees and flowering bushes. An abandoned refugee boat lay on the beach – menaces and mysteries and broken lives.

  More crewmen showed up on deck carrying various side arms. Jaxbee sat at the helm braced with pillows to support her body. The whack on her head had taken its toll. Dale was running the ship. Kit paced like a caged animal. We all wanted off. If I used a grain of imagination, I could hear a clock ticking. It was like a time bomb about to explode.

  I was on the verge of an anxiety attack. My thoughts were freewheeling, and I was desperate for a plan. Marni might have accidentally killed herself. That still didn’t take Hook off the hook. Not funny, I thought. Under his thin crust of insanity was a bubbling magma of cruelty and greed. He’s got to go down. I have to do it. But how was the big question, when at any moment his elegant army might turn into barking sadists.

  Roger said to wait. He was trying my patience. Unless he had some magic up his sleeve, I was about to take control and probably shoot myself in the foot.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  I stood alone at the rail staring at Nevis Island.

  “Wendy!” The voice was vaguely familiar.

  Looking around, I saw no one.

  “Wendy! Down here.”

  I leaned over the side. Croc was dangling from the rail wearing a white scuba suit. He was all but invisible against the white hull. “Is anybody on the deck with you?”

  “Now what?”

  “We’re going to throw you some lines. Get them anchored on the cleats.”

  I hate it when he bosses me. “This is
a super yacht. It doesn’t have cleats.” I was arguing with my crazy ex-husband who was hanging from the side of the ship like a marshmallow on a string.

  He staged-whispered and it came out a breathless squeak. “Of course it has cleats. All boats have cleats.” The wind caught him and the rope swayed. A Zodiac full of hedgies in white bobbed below him. It was a chilling lack of sophistication that allowed a bunch of hedge-fund managers to find and board an invisible ship.

  “Wendy, your life is on the table. Do you want to be rescued? Hook is going to kill you once he fences his treasure. Trust me.”

  “I did trust you, once. That’s why we’re divorced.”

  “Sweetheart, I’ve been chasing your Peter Payne pendant all over Georgia. I gave it to you so I could follow you, trace you, protect you.” He swung against the hull with a thud. “Why did you give it to some drunken punk?”

  “You put a tracking gadget in my locket?”

  Croc’s face was red from exertion. Hanging there was probably more exercise than he’d had in his entire life. “Yeah. GPS from Amazon.com so I would know where you were at all times…” he gasped like a fish out of water. “I spent days following that damn locket and ended up in a reggae bar in Atlanta.”

  I looked down at him remembering all the grief he gave me during our brief marriage. “Please…! You aren’t trying to save me. You’re just after Hook’s treasure.”

  “Wendy, darling… I want to parlay.”

  “What?”

  “That’s pirate for ‘talk.’ Let’s talk. Help me up.” Twirling in the breeze, he kept banging his butt on the hull.

  Turning away from yoyo man, I headed for Roger to tell him we were about to be invaded again. If he told me to “be prepared” one more time, I’d have to pop him. If he didn’t man up soon, I’d have Kit give him a pedicure. I was not in a good mood.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Once again I crept up on Roger as he watched Hook who stood on the bow of the Predator. The investigator put his index finger to his lips.

  I could hear Hook’s voice. He was on the phone again. “I want to be there when you do the wire transfers. Yes, I’ll be there right after noon. Correct, eight accounts. If I’m not there by two o’clock, you make the transfers without me. You heard me! If I’m not there by two, then something’s gone wrong on my end. You wire the money – don’t let anyone stop you. And shut that damn chicken up!” He clicked off and stared out to sea.

  “Go back,” Roger whispered, nudging me down the staircase.

  Following the SEC investigator as he slipped into the corridor, I asked, “What the heck is going on?”

  “Hook was talking to Island Insta Bank. He’s going to transfer sixteen billion dollars to eight offshore accounts. The Ponzi money will be lost, scattered around the world. We’ll never be able to retrieve it.”

  “How can he do that?”

  “Welcome to the shadowy world of Caribbean finance. Island Insta Bank International is located in a two-room house in Nevisland on Nevis Island. It’s manned by a large Antiguan woman. She’s the finance compliance officer – when she isn’t tending to her chickens.”

  “What’s a compliance officer?”

  “She’s tasked with making sure the bank conforms to the finance laws and feeding the chickens.”

  “This is sarcasm, right? Why don’t you go to that little bank and stop her? Arrest her in the name of the SEC. Don’t you have arresting eyes… I mean powers?”

  “Wendy, I’ve been eating and sleeping with Hook. Well…not sleeping with him. I have barely let him out of my sight. I’m getting what I came for and that’s not the sixteen billion dollars. But hold that thought.”

  “Wait, you came to question Marni.” I thought back to our first meeting. Roger’s words floated to the top like dead fish in red tide. He had accused me of being part of Hook’s Ponzi operation and fencing stolen artifacts. His exact words were, “You’re not going to skip out on me. Not when I’m this close to recovering the treasure.” I realized Roger was never interested in questioning Marni. And he’s not interested in recovering the stolen money.

  “Who are you, really?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask questions if you’re not ready for answers.”

  I wanted to squash him for being so pompous. “I’m ready for answers.”

  He tugged on my shoulder. “Come with me to my stateroom.”

  “You’re sense of timing is absurd. Is this the great seduction scene? Are you going to win me over with your long, dark eyelashes? I had a feeling your suspicion of me was bogus, designed to put me on the defensive.” I pulled back from his grip and banged my elbow. It hurt like hell. What’s the expression? Bang your elbow, you’ll get a surprise.

  “We only have minutes. Come with me, now.”

  I followed him because I couldn’t think of a better plan.

  Our suites were across from each other. His room looked as if it had been tossed. The infamous brown suit jacket lay on the floor; his borrowed white shorts and shirt were hanging from the bedside lamp. The bed covers were in a heap on the floor. Someone wanted him to know they were on to him.

  Roger stepped into the closet and looked up at the ceiling, “It’s okay.” He placed a chair between the racks and climbed on it. Sliding the ceiling tiles he removed a trunk about the size of a large U-Haul box.

  I stood under him as he handed it down to me. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked. Placing it on his bed, he slowly opened the lock and then lifted the lid.

  As irritated as I was with him, I was also curious.

  Peeling back layers of fragile cloth, he exposed an old box. Roger looked at me from under those incredible lashes. “I’m not SEC.”

  “Kind of figured.”

  “I’m not exactly the James Bond of bonds, either.”

  I shot him my most disgusted look.

  “You know the character Indiana Jones?”

  If I hadn’t been busting to know what was in the box, I’d have run off that minute. Instead I looked at him like you’d look at a used car salesman at the end of the month. “What are you, one of Charlie Hook’s clones? Out to line your pockets? You had me believing in you and trying to prove my worthiness to you when you were the liar.”

  “I’m a freelance archeologist. I retrieve stolen antiquities.”

  Not knowing whether to laugh at him or slug him, I said, “Yeah, and I’m a brain surgeon between gigs.”

  His face grew serious and intense. I hadn’t seen him wear that expression before. “My client is a silent patron of the British Museum. He hired me to bring back the Lost Boys.” Roger took surgical gloves from his pocket and struggled to pull them on. He opened the box, revealing what looked like very old cigars… longish tubes covered in paper that crumbled in his hands.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Slowly he unwrapped the first small bundle. “This box contains the shadows of twelve of the infant sons of the fourth dynasty pharaoh, Kjoser. He had thirteen sons, each one died at birth. These shadows are over five thousand years old. They are the most valuable artifacts to come from ancient Egypt. They are the Lost Boys.”

  Roger exposed all twelve figures. The shadows were made of a black translucent stone that captured the light then spun it off in shards of color. Each infant’s face was different and yet resembled his siblings. All had large vacant eyes and full lips. Each baby looked as if it had conquered its world and was exactly where it wanted to be… a shadow in death.

  “So sad to have lost these children at birth. Did they have the same mother?” I asked.

  He shook his head but didn’t speak.

  I watched as he laid the statues side by side on their wrappings on his bed. They were inlayed with jewels and carved in such detail they looked as if a laser had been used to create their fine expressions – but fifty centuries ago? Not possible.

  Roger cast me a look. “They are cut from solid black diamond. As the pharaoh grew in power and wealth, the shadows became more dazzlin
g. The thirteenth son was the most radiant, the most spectacular.”

  I struggled to speak. “How could anyone lose thirteen children… at birth?” I reached to touch one of the figures.

  He pulled my hand away. “Don’t touch! We can’t leave any body oils on the figures. We’re corrosive.” Using a cloth, he rewrapped the infant shadows in their swaddling. “Pharaoh Kjoser’s family was cursed. He never had a living male heir,” he said speaking softly as if he were in church.

  As I watched him gently place the bundles into a suitcase cushioned with pillows, I forgot about Croc dangling from the side of the Predator; I forgot about Kit, and Miami, and my life there. I listened as Roger the archeologist told me what he held in his hands and why.

  “The Egyptians believed there were six important aspects that made up a human being: the physical body, name, spirit, personality, immortality, and the shadow. Each one of these elements played an important role in the well being of an individual. Each was necessary to achieve rebirth in the afterlife.”

  He had me at the words “British Museum.” On my frequent trips to London, I would spend days wandering the museum’s Egyptian galleries. I was goose-bumpy just thinking about the mummies and coffins. Outside of Egypt, the British museum has one of the largest collections of mummies in the world. Roger had just become interesting. An archeologist… hmm.

  “A person could not exist without a shadow, nor the shadow without the person.”

  “Like a real shadow?”

  He shook his head. “It was considered a part of the essence of the entire being. The shadow is present from birth and was represented in death as a small human figure painted completely black. The pharaoh wanted his sons to be with him in glory in the afterlife. That’s what makes these pieces such incredible works of art. There are no other shadows like them.”

  I shivered with excitement. “You said there were twelve shadows here, but thirteen sons?”