Bluewater Betrayal: The Fifth Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Bluewater Thrillers Book 5)

by Charles Dougherty

  "Somebody's been asking questions about Henri."

  "I thought it was suicide," the man said.

  "Yeah. So whoever's asking the questions in La Duprey, it ain't the police. They asked about the English girl, too."

  The man took a sip of his beer, thinking. Guy waited, drumming his fingers on the table top.

  "That English cop, he'd stick out in La Duprey. Nobody would talk to him. Besides, he's been fishing in the lagoon for the last three days. He ain't been to La Duprey," the man finally said.

  "So maybe he sent somebody," Guy suggested.

  "Only person he's been seen with is that American," the man said. "Lives down in Ste. Anne."

  "The one with the wife works in the customs office?"

  "Yeah, that's the one. They had a beer at the restaurant in the marina late this afternoon while the American was waiting for his wife."

  Guy digested that for a moment. "The American, he's friends with those broads on the yacht."

  "What yacht?" the distributor asked.

  "Vengeance," Guy said. "It's been anchored off Ste. Anne for a while, but it left Sunday night. It's worth something to me to know where it went. See if any of your people know anything about it."

  "Why not ask the American?"

  "He's connected somehow. Not a good idea to mess with him. Shit happens to people who cross him."

  The distributor shrugged. "So what do you want me to do?"

  "Your guy at the restaurant -- you think maybe he heard what they were talking about this afternoon?"

  "I'll check. He's still on." The man lifted a cell phone to his ear and spoke softly for a moment. "Yeah, thanks," he said, disconnecting and turning back to Guy. "They sat off by themselves. He couldn't hear nothin', and the waitress, she's a friend of the American's wife, so he don't want to ask her."

  "Damn," Guy said.

  "We could pick up the waitress," the distributor volunteered.

  "Too dangerous. I told you, the American's connected. Your man have anything more?"

  "Not really. He said the American got there first. He saw him come out of the diesel shop across the way, and sit…"

  "Wait! Henri saw two of the women from that boat come out of the diesel shop the other day."

  "So?"

  "You still selling to those kids? The ones from Paris?"

  "Yeah, sure. Why?"

  "Didn't that one girl claim she's an actress or somethin'?"

  "Yeah. So?"

  "Get her to go in the diesel shop tomorrow morning. She should pretend to be looking for a friend of hers who works on a yacht named Vengeance and is friends with the American that lives around here somewhere. She can say she saw the American come out of the shop yesterday but couldn't catch him. See what she can find out about any of them. Think she can pull it off?"

  "Yeah, probably, but won't they wonder why she didn't just ask the American if she knows him?"

  Guy thought for a minute. "She should say she met him one time when she was with her friend from Vengeance, but she can't remember his name, so she can't track him down. She wants to know whether Vengeance is still around here, and she just happened to see him in the shop yesterday."

  "Yeah, that should work. I'll put her on it in the morning. She and her pals are already wasted tonight."

  Chapter 19

  Phillip had just returned from taking Sandrine to her office. When the phone rang, he was sitting on the veranda finishing the carafe of coffee that they had been sharing during breakfast. He glanced at the caller i.d. screen before he answered. The call was from a local number, but he did not recognize it. He shrugged and pressed the green button, answering the call, "Phillip Davis, good morning."

  "Good morning, Mr. Davis. This is Elle at Mécanique Diesel Générale. You were here yesterday about the injector pump for the yacht Vengeance."

  "Yes, I was. How may I help you?"

  "I wanted to see if the young lady found you. I provided her with your telephone number a little while ago."

  "No," Phillip replied, perplexity in his voice. "Which young lady?"

  "She was a friend of Ms. Berger, from Paris. She had met you with Ms. Berger one day soon, but could not remember how you were called, and she saw you leaving the shop yesterday. She has been trying to find Ms. Berger or Vengeance. She has not telephoned you yet?"

  "No. No one has called." Phillip wracked his brain, trying to recall whether Dani had introduced him to someone recently.

  "Perhaps she will call then. I give her your telephone number and tell her Ms. Berger sails Vengeance to St. Martin."

  Alarmed now, Phillip asked, "What did she look like?"

  "Look like?"

  "Ah, can you describe her appearance?"

  "Oh, that is 'look like.' I don't understand the first time. She is very pretty, about Ms. Berger's age. She has the blond hair, just so long to the shoulders. The man, he 'look like' a local, maybe; not 'look like' he comes with this girl from Paris. Not as, maybe, wealthy? He is 'look like' maybe a tough guy."

  "I see. Well, thank you for calling me, Elle. I appreciate you letting me know."

  "It is nothing, Mr. Davis. I think maybe I should not have tell this to her, no?"

  "Don't worry. She will probably call soon, and I'll let Ms. Berger know. Thank you again." Phillip disconnected the call and took a sip of coffee. After a minute's thought, he picked up the phone and dialed Dani's sat phone. After several rings, the call went to voicemail.

  Frustrated, he left a message. "Dani, this is Phillip. I guess you've gone to clear in. There may be trouble coming your way." He described the call from the woman at the diesel shop, finishing with, "So unless you recognize that couple, I think you should be on your guard. Pick up the injector pump and get under way as quickly as you can. It should be at the FedEx office by around 10 a.m. Also, I called Paul Russo yesterday to see if he could find out anything about the couple that chartered Isis, but I haven't heard back from him. Give me a call when you get this, and take care. 'Bye."

  ****

  Dan O'Leary and Guy Leclerc sat at Guy's regular table in the back corner of Guy's dimly lit bar, talking softly as O'Leary watched the door. He didn't expect anyone to bother them; it was mid-morning, and the bar wasn't open yet, but keeping an eye on the door was a habit that had saved him more than once. He took a sip of espresso and glanced at Guy for a split second, noticing with some satisfaction that the man couldn't sit still. That was good; O'Leary wanted him to be nervous.

  "You still haven't handled that problem we talked about last time I was here," O'Leary said, turning his cold gaze back to the door.

  "It's only been three days."

  "A lifetime, for some people. In three days, that broad coulda told lotsa people what happened down there in…what's that place again? The little island near St. Vincent?"

  "Bequia," Guy said, knowing that O'Leary hadn't forgotten Bequia. He wondered what the psycho was playing at.

  "Whatever." O'Leary glanced at him again, noting that he was shredding the paper napkin that had been beside his espresso cup. O'Leary smiled.

  "I got a lead for you on that," Guy said. That smile above those dead eyes reminded him of a shark. He felt his head twitch to the left involuntarily.

  "For me? How sweet."

  "Vengeance is headed for St. Martin."

  O'Leary shifted in his chair so that his side was to the door. He was facing Guy. "What? Why are you telling me?"

  "I thought you would want to go to…"

  O'Leary's right hand snaked across the table. He grabbed Guy's right hand, twisting and pulling, extending Guy's arm and bringing him to his feet as he squeaked in pain. O'Leary stood as Guy fell across the table toward him. He reached under Guy's right arm with his left hand and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. He lifted Guy as he extended his left arm and levered him forward by continuing to twist his right arm, throwing the surprised man to the floor on O'Leary's side of the table with a resounding crash. He dusted his hands together and de
livered a swift kick to Guy's ribs as the man tried to scramble to his feet. O'Leary sat down again and picked up his espresso cup, draining it in a swallow.

  "I told you to handle it, you worthless piece of shit."

  "Okay, I, I…"

  "You what?" O'Leary's voice held pure contempt as he looked at his cowering victim.

  "I got to stay here and…"

  "I'll stay here and keep an eye on things. You'll go to St. Martin and take care of those women."

  "Okay, D-Dan. I'll go, but…"

  "Take my gun. You need it -- going up against a bunch of girls." O'Leary slipped a pistol from under his shirt and put it on the table. "Get up. Get back in your chair."

  Guy complied, looking nervously at the pistol as he slid his knees under the table.

  O'Leary nodded at the gun. "Pick it up."

  Guy picked up the pistol, recognizing as he did that it was Henri's .357 Smith and Wesson. His hand shook as he tucked it in his waistband.

  "How'd you find out where they went?"

  Guy stammered through his explanation, including what Henri's brother had told him about the English detective.

  "You heard from him yet?"

  "The brother?" Guy asked.

  O'Leary nodded.

  "No. It was late yesterday when he came."

  O'Leary nodded again. "So he'll come back here, looking for you?"

  "Yeah. Another reason I need to…"

  "Shut up and answer my questions. He got a name, this brother?"

  "David Roux."

  "Will the bartender recognize him?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay. I'll handle it. Get your ass to St. Martin, and don't come back until those women are dead. And don't leave a damn trail, or you'll end up like Henri."

  Guy stood and left his bar, thinking about how O'Leary might have come to have Henri's pistol.

  ****

  Paul Russo was relaxing in the cockpit of his boat as it bobbed gently at its mooring off the Miami Yacht Club. The anchorage in the Venetian Islands was a peaceful spot on a weekday afternoon, although it was only minutes away from the bustle of Miami, and not much farther from the insanity that was South Beach. He couldn't visit the boat without his thoughts drifting to his friends down in the islands.

  After he had retired from Miami's police department, he had intended to pursue his love of police work as a private detective and had gotten a license. Before he progressed beyond that, one of his old Cuban-American friends had gotten him involved in a search for his missing goddaughter, Dani Berger.

  While he and Phillip Davis searched for the missing girl, they had sailed through the eastern Caribbean on Phillip's antique sloop. It hadn't taken long for Paul's initial exposure to cruising under sail to develop into a full-blown obsession. He'd soon bought this little boat and started learning to sail.

  By the time he had mastered the basics, he lusted after a larger boat. He had spent a few days sailing in the islands with his new friends since then and had developed a taste for traditional, heavy displacement blue-water cruising boats. He had listed this boat for sale just this week and had been sprucing her up when Phillip Davis had called him yesterday.

  Though his time on Phillip's old Carriacou sloop had been the beginning of Paul's infatuation, he had also been introduced to the splendor of Vengeance. His time sailing on Vengeance had been limited; Dani and her partner had only owned her for a few weeks at that point, and they were still tinkering with her more than they were sailing her.

  Paul had intended to book a charter on Vengeance once Dani and Liz had her squared away, but he hadn't gotten around to it. Now he realized that over a year had passed; he should really book that charter before he started shopping seriously for another boat.

  His cell phone chirped. He set his beer down and picked up the phone, examining the number and recognizing it as belonging to his old partner, who had replaced him as a lieutenant in homicide when Paul took early retirement. He pressed connect as he lifted the phone to his ear. "Hey, Luke!"

  "Hey, Russo. I gotta say your friends don't hang out with the best crowd."

  "What do you have?"

  "Not much, yet. The Dulzuras woman's got a record, but nothin' too recent."

  "Yeah? What'd she do?"

  "She got picked up a few times for soliciting. Got busted a couple of times for dancin' nude in topless joints back when people gave a damn about that. Nothin' she ever did time for. Charges were either dropped, or she paid a fine. You know. Usual shit. She's been clean for a couple of years now. Or maybe she left town, took her show on the road. You know how they are, those babes."

  "Got a decent mug shot?"

  "Oh yeah. I'll email it to you. She's a looker, even in a mug shot. What'd she do to your friends?"

  "Nothing, really. She may have witnessed something they're interested in. We'd just like to talk to her and find out what she saw and why she skipped out so quick. She and Contreras were on a charter boat called Isis that one of my pals was crewing on. Liz, she's the friend, left the two of them aboard with the skipper after Contreras got rough with her. Next morning, the skipper's body was hanging from the mast and Contreras and Dulzuras were gone. Local cops put it down to suicide, but now somebody's tried to blow up Liz's boat."

  "Isis, you mean?"

  "Nah, Liz was just helping out on Isis. She and Mario's goddaughter own their own charter boat -- Vengeance. It's the one had the bomb on it."

  "Jesus, Russo! You got more shit goin' on now than before you quit the job."

  "Yeah. Only now I don't get paid for it. You get anything on Contreras?"

  "No."

  "You mean he's clean?"

  "No. I mean there's no such person. No sheet, no driver's license, no property taxes, nothin' anywhere that matches what you told me."

  "Fake i.d., sounds like," Paul said. "Well, send me what you got on Dulzuras. Maybe she'll know who Contreras really is."

  "You got it. Check your email. I gotta go. Somebody's shootin' winos again."

  Chapter 20

  As Vengeance motored out of Simpson Bay, her newly repaired diesel humming softly, Liz was at the helm. Connie was removing the cover from the mainsail, and Dani was lashing the anchor in its chocks on the bowsprit. They finished at the same time and joined Liz in the cockpit.

  "Let's get the main up before the sun goes down," Dani suggested.

  "I'll take the halyard," Connie volunteered, scrambling back up to the mast as Dani lifted the coiled mainsheet.

  Connie spent a moment freeing the main halyard from the pin rail where it had been hanging in a neat coil. She laid the coil on deck at the foot of the mast and stood on tip-toe to fasten the shackle to the sail. She picked up a bight of line and took three turns around the halyard winch, clicking a winch handle into the socket on top of the winch. "Ready," she called, looking back at Liz.

  "Ready," Dani said, holding the tail of the main sheet in her hand.

  "Heading up," Liz called as she swung the helm, bringing Vengeance's bow into the wind. She watched as Connie hauled the halyard in hand-over-hand. The sail was about halfway up the mast, flogging loudly in the steady 20-knot wind when Connie resorted to the winch to finish hoisting it.

  "It's up," Connie cried. She whipped a figure-of-eight hitch around the cleat beneath the winch and coiled the tail of the halyard, hanging it neatly on the same cleat.

  "Falling off on the starboard tack," Liz called, swinging the helm to port as Dani payed out the mainsheet. The sail was slack, the luff fluttering, until Liz said, "I'm on course." Dani hauled in the mainsheet hand-over-hand until the sail filled with a crack and began drawing. Vengeance came alive as Dani used the winch to refine the trim on the mainsail.

  The three women paused for a moment, savoring the feel of the yacht as she put her shoulder into the building sea and picked up speed. Liz bent to the instrument panel and pulled the stop cable, shutting the diesel down. They enjoyed the silence for a moment as Dani adjusted the mainsheet and
Liz tweaked the helm. Liz leaned back, looking up at the masthead, checking the wind vane. She glanced down at the compass and back up at the masthead. After a few seconds, she looked at the knot meter in the panel above the compass. "Five and a half knots, right on course for St. Thomas," she remarked.

  "It's a hundred miles?" Connie asked.

  "Close enough," Liz agreed. "Let's roll out the Yankee."

  "I'll get it," Dani said, picking up the Yankee sheet and wrapping three turns around the primary winch on the port side of the cockpit. Holding the tail of the sheet in her left hand, she uncleated the furling line with her right and began easing the sail out, hauling in the sheet as the sail unfurled. "Let me know if you want me to stop before it's all out," she called over her shoulder.

  "She's feeling good; we'll carry it all," Liz said.

  Dani secured the furling line as the sail unrolled completely. She cranked in a foot or so of the sheet using the winch. "How's that?" she asked.

  "Eight and a half knots," Liz said. "Helm's neutral. Let's just hold off on the staysail until we see what the wind does this evening."

  "This will put us in before sunup," Connie said, "if the wind holds."

  "Yes. Might as well ride like this for a while. Wind should hold, maybe even build a little. We'll probably have to heave to and wait for daylight unless we actually want to go into St. Thomas instead of Virgin Gorda," Dani said.

  "Any reason to prefer one over the other?" Connie asked.

  "Not really…" Dani started to say, but the chirping of the sat phone interrupted her. "I should go below and get that. It's probably Phillip, returning our call from when I called him back and missed him a few minutes ago." She stepped down the companionway and grabbed the phone from its bracket at the chart table.

  They had returned to Vengeance with the injector pump after clearing in at the police station in Simpson Bay and picking up the pump at the FedEx office that morning. Eager to get the engine working, Dani and Connie had set to work immediately while Liz fixed lunch. They had not noticed that they had missed Phillip's warning call until late afternoon, when they began preparing to get underway.

  "Hello, Phillip," Dani said as she climbed back into the cockpit. She listened a moment. "We're under way for the Virgins; beautiful sailing. I'll put you on the speaker -- we're all in the cockpit." She sat down and held the phone, pressing the hands-free button and turning up the volume. "Can you hear me okay?"