“Wow,” she said. “It’s like Robinson Crusoe on steroids. You really built it yourself?”
“The main house and the basic bunkhouses, yeah. But a lot of people chipped in with the rest.”
“What rest?”
“You’ll see,” I replied, grinning.
“Is that a racing boat?” Kim asked, pointing at the Cigarette 42x tied to the center dock under the house.
“It belonged to some bad people,” Deuce said. “They no longer have any use for it, so we took it.”
Carl and Charlie’s kids met us at the dock and Carl Junior helped tie us off. I introduced Kim to them and little Patty said, “Mister Jesse is your daddy?”
The two of them took Kim by the hands and led her toward the door then up to the deck. The rest of us followed. When I got to the deck, Kim was standing by the table at the far corner, looking out over the island.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, when I walked up next to her. The others went on down the back steps and continued to the two tables by the bunkhouse. “What’s that over there?” she asked, pointing to the aquaculture system.
“We grow some of our own food here. Tomatoes, green beans, some peppers and squash, mostly. That’s Carl and Charlie’s house,” I said, pointing. “They keep things running here and pretty much take care of everything.”
She turned toward me. “Whose shirt is this I’m wearing?”
“I was married almost a year ago. Her name was Alex and it belonged to her. Come on, you must be starved.” We went down to the tables and joined the others. I introduced Kim to Carl, Charlie, and Chyrel.
“Y’all sit down and relax,” Charlie said. “I’ll slice some fruit before lunch.”
While enjoying a lunch of grunts and a summer squash casserole, Carl explained to Kim how the little garden worked. I noticed Pescador raise his head and cock his ears toward the west. A moment later, I heard an airplane approaching. While it’s not unusual to hear private planes out here, the sound of a sixty-year-old radial engine in a plane flying low enough to scare flying fish into flight meant only one thing. It was my friend and part-time mechanic, Dave Williams. I listened as the slight sound grew louder. Looking around, I noticed only Pescador, Deuce, and Tony seemed to hear it.
Suddenly, Dave’s deHavilland Beaver flew over at treetop level, rising up over the Trents’ house, climbing and banking to the south. Dave’s son was the young man who was killed in the explosion a couple of months ago, on the day Deuce and Julie were married.
“What the hell?” Kim said as she involuntarily ducked and stared after the plane disappearing into the late morning sun.
“A friend of mine,” I said. “Come on, you’ll like this,” I added as I rose from my seat and headed down the path between the two bunkhouses. The others followed along, Kim catching up and walking beside me. I glanced back and saw the flag flapping lightly in a westerly breeze and could hear Dave banking the plane around in a wide turn to line up for an upwind water landing.
We reached the end of the pier on the north side of the island and I pointed the plane out to Kim. He was about a mile out, leveling off and descending. Having chopped the throttle, we could no longer hear the sound of the big radial.
“What’s he doing?” Kim asked.
“Stopping by for a visit,” I said. “His name’s Dave and he does some mechanical work on the boats for me.”
“He’s going to land on the water? It’s a seaplane?”
“A 1953 deHavilland Beaver.”
When the plane was a few hundred yards out and just feet off the water, he flared and gently touched the surface with the pontoons. The plane skipped across the light chop, then settled into the water a little. Dave increased the throttle, keeping it up on plane until he was just a hundred feet from the pier. There, he cut the engine to an idle and it settled down in the water and decreased speed to a walk. Ten feet from the pier, he cut power, opened the left door, and stood on the pontoon with a rope coiled in his hand.
Tony caught the tossed coil and we all ducked as the big wing went over the tee-shaped pier. Tony walked the line to the eastern end of the tee before taking the slack and bringing the plane to a stop just a couple of feet away. Dave tied the line off to a cleat on the pontoon aft of the doors while Julie deftly tossed another line over a cleat forward of the doors. They both hauled on the lines, bringing the pontoon up to the rubber bumpers on the pier, and Dave stepped up.
“Hey, Dave,” I said, taking his hand. “What brings you up here?” Dave and his wife live on Stock Island, just before Key West. He does some charter fishing in the back country, using kayaks he carries in his plane to get clients to places other guides can’t.
“We’re moving back to Kentucky,” he said as he pulled a box out of the cargo area in back and handed it to Tony. “This is for Charlie,” he told him. Turning back to me, he said, “I wanted to give you the first option on buying my plane.”
I’d just spent two months getting my private pilot’s license and seaplane certificate. Dave knew I was looking to buy a plane, since most of my flying time had been in his Beaver with him and my instructor and we’d discussed the merits of a lot of planes. I’d been planning to wait until I finished my multi-engine certification. I wanted a Beechcraft King Air for its range.
He reached in and grabbed a second box, which he handed to Julie, and said, “This one’s for Charlie, too.” Turning to Deuce he said, “That last one in there is for Carl, Deuce. Mind getting it? It’s pretty heavy.”
“Why don’t you take it back to Kentucky?” I asked as we walked up the pier. “Oh, Dave, this is my daughter, Kim. Kim, meet Dave Williams.”
He stopped and turned to the two of us. “Your daughter?” He took the hand she offered and looked closely at her. “Yeah, I can see the resemblance.” He turned and started walking again. “We bought a place up in the hills, no water around. This plane belongs down here.”
I looked back at the Beaver and said, “Yeah, she’s perfect for this area, that’s for sure. I’ve been waiting until I get my multi cert. I want to get a King Air, but if she’s really available, yeah, I’d consider taking her off your hands.”
Chapter Eleven
“How long will you be staying on the island, Miss Bonamy?” asked the desk clerk at Hope Town Harbour Lodge on Elbow Cay.
“Indefinitely,” Ettaleigh Bonamy replied. “I would think a week. I apologize for the short notice.”
“It’s no trouble, ma’am. Your assistant booked two of our ocean view cottages and two of our main lodge rooms for one week. If you will need them longer than that, please see me a day in advance. This is our slow time of year and we should have no trouble extending the reservations.”
She leaned over to read his name tag and said, “Thank you, Paul. Can you have a bottle of wine sent to my cottage? A Chanson Chablis, perhaps?”
“Yes, ma’am. Right away.” He turned and beckoned a bellman with his finger. “James, please take Miss Bonamy’s bags to cottage two.”
The young man was quick to gather up the woman’s three bags. “Follow me, ma’am.”
She left the office and followed the man through a network of ivy and palm-covered walkways, arriving at the middle of three small cottages. They were quaint and rustic-looking on the outside, but appeared to be meticulously maintained, as did the surrounding lawn and vegetation. He unlocked the door and held it open for her, then followed her in.
Placing the key on a small table by the door and the bags at the foot of the king-sized bed, he turned and asked, “Can I bring you anything, ma’am?”
“Thank you,” she said, handing him a ten-dollar bill. “That will be all.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, taking the bill and pocketing it instantly. “If I may?”
She was looking out the open French door at the deck with a custom gas grill and the ocean just beyond. She looked back at him over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“I don’t mean to be nosy, but your name? Are you
related to the Bonamy family that once lived down on Long Island?”
She smiled, her full lips exposing perfectly straight teeth, turned and said, “Very distantly related, yes. You know island history very well. You’re speaking of Bromfield Bonamy, of course?” The young man blushed slightly, something Ettaleigh found enticing. At thirty-six she was in the prime of her life, physically and emotionally. She preferred young men like this one—they usually had an appetite and stamina that at times even matched her own.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “A very colorful character in our islands’ history. Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you, James.” She cocked her head in a seductive manner and asked, “If I do need something, should I call you?”
James tried to control his reaction, but it didn’t work, as his cheeks colored once more. He was twenty-three years old and had never met such an exotically beautiful woman as this.
“I’m on duty until five, ma’am,” he stammered.
“What if I need something after five?” she asked, gliding toward him. “How can I reach you?”
James couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Local island girls flirted with him often and he was considered a good-looking young man. He’d watched the rich, beautiful women that visited the Lodge from all over the world with no small amount of lust, but he had never made an advance. It would cost him his job and they were hard to come by on a small island. Yet, here was an exquisitely beautiful older woman making advances on him.
He’d had his own business cards made up, as he was an accomplished spear fisherman and sold his catch all over Great Abaco, Elbow Cay, and Man-O-War Cay. He pulled one out of his pocket, knowing it wasn’t a very good idea. But his libido had another idea.
“I catch fish to sell,” he stammered again. “For the grill,” he added, pointing out to the deck. “If you want some, call me.” He handed her the card, hoping it sounded innocent enough if she wasn’t coming on to him and suggestive enough if she was. She slid the card inside the top of her blouse, which caused James to become noticeably excited.
There was a knock at the door. James turned and opened it, then left the cottage as the wine steward entered. The wine steward was an older black man who placed the tray on the table and offered to open the bottle for her. She thanked him and said she was going to change and go for a swim first. She tipped him and he left immediately.
Opening the single French door to the deck, a breeze blew in carrying the fresh, salty scent of the sea and sand with it, gently ruffling her loose-fitting pleated blue skirt. She stepped outside and marveled at the lush tropical foliage that separated the cottages. There was a narrow path through the low vegetation that went over the dune to the beach, which appeared to be completely deserted.
She welcomed times like this. Her job was very demanding and when an opportunity to indulge herself was presented, she took advantage of it. Technically still on the clock, she’d arrived on Elbow Cay a few days ahead of her employer to make sure the accommodations were suitable, make arrangements for the business they would be conducting, and ensure their business would proceed uninterrupted.
Going back inside, she quickly unpacked her suitcases and put her things away, making sure the young man’s card wasn’t lost. Then she changed into a backless yellow one-piece bathing suit, cut high at the thigh and low at the neck. The suit accentuated her long legs, narrow flat belly, and modest bosom. She released the single pin in her hair that held it in a bun and it cascaded across her shoulders, like a dark wave, reaching the middle of her back.
The history of the Bonamy family in the islands was colorful indeed. Bromfield Bonamy was one of the first settlers on Long Island, just after the American Revolution. As a Loyalist to the Crown, he fled Charleston with many others to settle the deserted islands of the northern Bahamas. He received a land grant of four hundred acres from King George III and settled there to grow Sea Island cotton. After a caterpillar infestation destroyed the crops in 1796, he turned to piracy. Not in the truest sense of the word. He sailed his private warship, Ballahoo, throughout the northern Bahamas, preying solely on American cargo ships. Bonamy led an otherwise secluded life on his large plantation. Although he never married, he fathered fourteen children with several native slave women he brought up from Hispaniola. Their descendants were now scattered all over the Bahamas, Florida, even all the way up to Charleston.
Those slaves weren’t of African origin, but were from the nearly decimated original inhabitants of the Bahama Islands, the Lucaya. Like Ettaleigh, they were a dark-skinned, handsome people with long, straight black hair and dark eyes. By 1550, they had all been killed or enslaved by the Spanish, leaving the northern islands uninhabited for over two hundred years. The Spaniards considered the lowlying islands unsuitable for growing anything and the waters too treacherous. The ancestry of the Lucaya can be traced back to the people that inhabited North and South America long before the first Europeans arrived.
Ettaleigh walked out onto the deck and leaned against the rail, facing an easterly breeze. The light wind lifted a few strands of hair from her shoulders. She looked up and down the beach, then lifted her face to the warm sun with her eyes closed, as if meditating.
She left the private deck and followed the path down to the beach, not having any particular destination or direction in mind. She was nearly to the water’s edge before she saw anyone’s footprints in the sand. She turned and went in the direction the footsteps had come from.
James watched her come out of the back of the cottage from his vantage point on the second-floor balcony of the main lodge. He knew he hadn’t been dreaming by the way she’d slipped the card into her bra as she touched her lips with her tongue. He watched her walk to the water’s edge and turn south toward the cove, her dark skin and hair all the more exotic in the yellow bathing suit she wore.
As Ettaleigh walked, she marveled at the beautiful lush shoreline. Coconut palms leaned out over the beach from the dune, where clumps of sawgrass and sea grape marked the edge of vegetation. The water was crystal clear and she could easily see the scattered rock outcroppings just below the water’s surface. Further out, the bottom fell away quickly and the water turned from green to a deep, cobalt blue less than a hundred yards from shore.
She walked for over a mile and never saw another person. Slow season, she thought. That’s an understatement. She came to a rock outcropping that jutted out into the water at high tide and curved away to a sheltered area beyond. The tide was low, so she continued around the rock, marveling at the home built on its bluff. Beyond the protected water was a ten-foot limestone cliff. She waded right into the calmer water until it came to mid-thigh. Seeing no obstacles in the little cove, she jackknifed her lithe body and dived beneath the surface. Her long black hair streaming behind her, she swam underwater for ten yards before surfacing face first in waist-deep water, which left her hair streaming down the middle of her back.
The mixture of the cool water and warm sun seemed to rejuvenate and excite her after the flight and boat ride to get to the island. She’d have all day tomorrow and possibly the next day alone, before her employer and their business associates arrived. More than enough time to relax and unwind. Enough time to test that young man’s stamina and endurance, she thought. Again she dove under the water, cooling her body and mind, both of which needed it.
She came up out of the water and brought her hair around her shoulder, wringing the water out of it. Returning to the beach, she walked slowly back toward the cottage, retracing her steps. I will call him tonight after dinner, she thought. She looked forward to it, wondering if he could last as long as his youth suggested. If not, she had ways of arousing even the most exhausted lover.
Chapter Twelve
Dave and I agreed on a price. It didn’t take much haggling, but we did anyway, because that’s how things are done in the Keys. He would fly back to Boca Chica, clean her up, and do a complete service on her before I picked her up in two days. We w
ould be going to Elbow Cay in a week and I suddenly had a crazy idea to fly over ahead of time to get a bird’s eye view of the areas where we thought the treasure was buried.
After Dave left, I brought everyone back down to the Anchor. Kim and I were sitting on a table out back by the boat ramp with Pescador, waiting for the sunset. It had become my and his ritual and I wanted to share it with my daughter.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“You think I could stay with you for a while? A couple days or a week maybe? I’d like to get to know you better.”
I gave that some serious thought. I hadn’t seen my daughter since she was just five months old and we barely knew each other. We had a trip coming up and might be gone for several days, but I wanted to get to know her as well.
“A couple of days, sure. Several of us are going to the Bahamas on business later this week, though. Might be gone a week.”
“Government business?”
This was as good a time as any, so while we watched the sun sink toward the horizon, I told her about her grandfather who was killed in Vietnam and her grandmother who couldn’t continue alone and took her own life. I told her about her great-grandparents who raised me and about the time Deuce’s dad and I found treasure in Fort Pierce. I told her about the inheritance Pap and Mam left me. I told her about the gold that Deuce, Rusty, and I found last spring. I told her everything we knew about the treasure we were looking for and finally, I told her all about Alex and everything she left me, both material and emotional. Somewhere during all that, the sun set with a spectacular display of light and color.
“You reached out to me, Kim. With all the stories your mom told you, that was a big step. I’m glad you did.”
“Somehow, I was certain that none of it was true. I love your little island and your friends. Can I stay? I promise I won’t get in the way.”
“You’ll never be in the way,” I said. “Call your sister and tell her you’ll be staying down here a little longer. Call your mom, too. You’re only seventeen, but you’re out of high school and can make a decision like that on your own. Still, you should call her.”
Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) Page 11
