by Rebecca Hale
With a last look at the channel’s stunning vista of brilliant blues and greens, she stepped toward the overhang. Her pace increased as she neared the edge, gradually building to a full-on sprint.
Her feet left the ground, sending her body tumbling through space, momentarily weightless as the sea reached up to catch her.
Murmurs circulated through the gathering of day laborers surrounding the Freedom Memorial. A seam began to form on the outskirts of the crowd as a young woman with curly, dark hair wearing a flowered sundress slowly made her way toward the front.
Whispers murmured through the mist as she climbed onto the green bench next to Beulah Shah.
The voices grew louder.
“That’s her. That’s the girl from the resort.”
Someone pointed and pronounced the crowd’s conclusion.
“She’s the one. She’s the Slave Princess.”
58
The Eco-resort
Conrad and I bumped along the muddy road leading up to the eco-resort in the front cab of Manto’s truck taxi. The earlier storm had passed, leaving behind a clear backdrop for the day’s sunset, and a slick, treacherous surface on the steep, unpaved route. Given the challenging road conditions, I’d decided the truck taxi had a better shot of making it to the camp. The Jeep would be safe enough at the Salt Pond parking lot, I reasoned, patting my hand against the pocket where I’d stored the key.
Twenty minutes later, I steered the truck taxi into the eco-resort’s gravel parking lot, which was filled with several rental cars and a mud-spattered limo. I stared at the limo, wondering how it had made the trek up the hill, as Conrad—still in his Slave Princess getup—jumped out of the truck.
A handful of lawyer types milled about the cabin that housed the check-in desk where the resort’s bald-headed, full-bearded director, Alden Edwards, handed out stapled packets of photocopied paper.
I trailed Conrad through the mumbling crowd, every member of which appeared to be intensely reading the document. From the comments I picked up as we walked past, I gathered the lawyers had just come from Cruz Bay, where they’d been nervously observing the gathering of day laborers at the Freedom Memorial.
Their reporting memos had been revised several times over the last few days; the events of the past six hours would require yet another rewrite. Despite the morning’s disruptive walkout, however, several groups still intended to advise their clients to make a bid.
Alden Edwards had one more dampening piece of information for their reports.
“Here you go, fellows,” he said, beaming broadly as he handed packets to the latest lawyerly pair to arrive. “Freshly unearthed documentation for you.”
I peeked over the nearest shoulder to read the top page. Bold block print proclaimed: “Remains of the 1733 Amina Slave Princess believed buried on Maho Bay Property.”
“This is going out to the local media as I speak,” Alden added with a confident smirk.
Conrad waved at Alden from the edge of the crowd, giving the eco-resort director a cheeky smile before setting off down one of the walkways.
As I scampered through the lawyers to catch up to the skinny little man in Slave Princess garb, I couldn’t shake the nagging question in my gut. The Princess’s connection to the property seemed a little too convenient.
Joining Conrad on the walkway, I leaned toward his head and whispered under my breath, “Conrad…did you?”
He winked slyly at me.
I glanced back at the crowd, silently pondering. I counted at least three or four of the assembled attorneys who looked unconvinced. We were a ways off yet, I feared, from the resolution Conrad so desperately sought.
I didn’t have long to worry about Conrad’s forged burial document, for I soon found myself standing in front of the infamous teepee tent. It looked, incidentally, exactly the same as the rest of the eco-resort’s canvas-walled structures. It didn’t bear any resemblance to a teepee, at least not to my way of thinking. After all these years of hearing Conrad rave about it, I confess, the reality was a bit of a letdown.
Thumping up the wooden steps to the entrance, I was immediately hit by a thick smoky fragrance that intensified as Conrad swung open the screen door and beckoned me inside.
“What have I gotten myself into?” I muttered as I followed his swishing sarong through the doorway.
Perhaps this had all been an elaborate ruse to lure me to the teepee tent, I thought ruefully, as I tried to remember exactly why I had accepted Conrad’s invitation in the first place.
The erstwhile Slave Princess skipped over to a cot on the opposite side of the room and began digging through a duffel bag laid open on its surface.
“So, Conrad,” I began warily, positioning myself next to the door in the hopes of catching a breath of fresh air. “How did you come up with the costume?”
A chuckle gurgled up from the bed as Conrad continued searching the duffel bag. “My niece seems to think she might have been the inspiration.”
“Your niece?” I repeated, as the first inkling of realization began to hit me.
“Yep,” he said, reaching into his back pocket. “She’s been helping me save the teepee tent.”
He turned and stepped toward me. “My sister married a fellow from this area, not long after I first started coming down here.” He cleared his throat and frowned sadly. “She passed away during childbirth. Then, her husband—well, he pretty much lost his mind with grief. He still lives here on the island. Used to be, you’d find him hanging around the bars most days, but a couple of months ago we managed to get him a job at one of the rental car places over on St. Thomas.”
Conrad’s face scrunched up into a grimace. “I don’t think that’s going to work out.” He jerked his head toward the parking lot. “I reckon they’re going to want their limo back here pretty soon.”
I stood there, my jaw slowly dropping, as Conrad flipped open his worn leather wallet and thumbed through the contents.
“Anyway, my niece grew up with my folks in New York. It was only recently that she started asking questions, wanting to know more about her father’s side of the family. She’s working at your resort this summer. I’m sure you’ve seen her around. I’ve got a photo of her in my wallet.”
He held up a picture of a young woman with green eyes, cocoa-colored skin, and dark, curly hair.
“Her name is—”
The full implication of his revelation finally hit me, and I cut in before he could finish.
“Wait—you’re Hannah’s uncle?”
I was still processing that last piece of information when a commotion outside the teepee tent interrupted our conversation. I climbed down the steps to the wooden walkway, straining my head to catch a glimpse of the ruckus going on in front of the check-in cabin.
During the few minutes we’d been inside the tent, crowds of day laborers had descended upon the eco-resort, swamping the lawyers who were still studying Alden’s pamphlets.
The new arrivals, wielding conch shells, horns, and the occasional machete, had quickly snatched up copies of the Slave Princess burial documentation. None of these readers, I noted, appeared the least bit skeptical of its claims, and they, I suddenly appreciated, were a far more important audience than the whole cadre of lawyers.
As I surveyed the scene outside the check-in cabin, Conrad skipped up next to me on the walkway and tapped me on the shoulder.
“This is for you,” he said with great formality. In his hands, he held out a blue nylon satchel. He issued an informative nod and added, “One friend to the other.”
“Thanks,” I replied. The satchel rustled as if it held a stack of papers inside. More Slave Princess propaganda, I assumed.
I glanced up at the sky, which was quickly dimming toward darkness. The next front of clouds had already filled in the eastern horizon. The sooner I managed to get Manto’s truck taxi down the hill, the better. Besides, I had no intention of returning to Conrad’s teepee tent.
“I’ll take a lo
ok at this later,” I said with a wave. Then I slung the satchel’s strap over my shoulder and headed toward the parking lot.
“Later, Princess,” I called out, still shaking my head with bemusement as I trotted off down the walkway.
59
The Pen
It was with great relief that I finally pushed open the door to the condo late Wednesday afternoon. It felt like an eternity had passed since I’d left it that morning to meet Charlie and his Jeep.
I walked wearily across the living room, intent on getting out of my swimsuit and into a hot shower as quickly as possible. Midway around the backside of the couch, however, I stopped. Something felt amiss—something other than my salty swimsuit and the disturbing image of Conrad in his Slave Princess costume now imprinted on my brain.
I scanned the area, searching for the out-of-place item. My eyes passed over the glass-top coffee table and the expiring wicker chair, finally landing on the kitchen counter and the pen lying on its surface next to the blank pad of paper.
Crossing the room, I reached out for the pen. Slowly, I turned it over in my hands. The interior rod was cocked to its on position, as if someone had held it, intending to write a message.
Lightly tapping the tip of the pen against my lips, I walked into the bedroom. After a moment of hesitation, I pulled open the top drawer. It was empty—Jeff’s spare shirt was gone.
My wordless boyfriend, I mused with chagrin, had left his good-bye.
With a sigh, I trudged to the shower, desperately trying to ignore the doleful tweets of the bananaquits sadly swooping about my head.
60
The Client
Vivian leaned tiredly against the reception desk’s front counter. After several hours of filling in for room cleaning, laundry service, and otherwise dealing with frustrated guests, she was exhausted.
She hadn’t seen Hannah Sheridan—or Penelope Hoffstra, for that matter—since returning from Coral Bay that morning. Vivian was ready to wash her hands of both women, although at this moment, Hannah was at the top of her list of people she would like to throttle.
According to the reports she’d picked up from her two-way radio, her missing crew members were still running around the island, chasing down rumored sightings of the Slave Princess.
“Slave Preen-cess,” Vivian muttered bitterly under her breath. “If Eye ever git mye hands on yewe…”
She looked up as the computer programmer leaned over the reception desk and placed a chubby hand on its counter. All of her venom and pent-up frustration immediately transferred to his portly figure.
In the midst of the day’s chaos, she had temporarily forgotten about the man who had arranged for Hamilton’s and her transfer to St. John—and the payment he had required in return.
“You found everything you needed?” she asked stolidly, trying without success to keep the loathing tone from her voice.
“Yes, I did,” he replied with a nervous glance around the reception area. “I’d like to be on tonight’s water taxi.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “If you can arrange it.”
Vivian grunted tensely. “Of course.”
She flipped through the sheets attached to her clipboard and then looked up at him suspiciously. “I already have your reservation.”
“You do?” he asked uneasily.
Shuffling feet crept toward the counter as a bent, broken figure hobbled down the hallway from the break room. Beulah’s bony face peeked around the edge of the front desk.
Her hoarse voice whispered loudly, “What-ter taxi…what-ter taxi…ohhh, no…”
A startled expression crossed the programmer’s face as Beulah sidled up next to Vivian.
“Eye doon nut lyke thuh what-ter taxi…”
The programmer stared in disbelief at the name tag pinned to the front of the old woman’s frayed shirtdress. He shook his head, blinked, and then read it again.
Beulah…surely not. This decrepit creature couldn’t be his Beulah—not Beulah Shah, the woman who had paid for his Maho Bay services.
But as he stood there next to the reception counter, the woman’s ragged face fixed on his thick neck. A constricting pressure clamped down on his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs. As her gaze lifted, and their eyes met, his doubts left him. This was, indeed, Beulah Shah.
The programmer stepped back from the counter, gulping in a deep breath.
He’d had some bizarre clients in his day—that was the nature of his employment—but never one quite as unexpected as this. And never, he thought grumpily, had one locked him in a cellar overnight. He wiped his wrist across his sweating brow as he turned away from the reception desk.
This would be the last time he took on a project for Ms. Beulah Shah.
“What-ter taxi…what-ter taxi…ohhh, no…”
Vivian gave Beulah a sideways glance and pursed her lips, but the old woman continued her lament, her dark eyes intensely focused on the back of the retreating computer programmer.
“Beeg sheep go down slowe…Small sheep go down fest…”
Vivian rolled her eyes. “We haven’t lost anyone yet,” she said sarcastically.
“Ack, Eye doon nut lyke the what-ter taxi…”
With a sigh, Vivian scribbled Beulah’s name on her clipboard, adding her to the list of the night’s water taxi passengers.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
61
The Paper Bag
A shower made the post-Jeff world look a little better, even if I’d had to scrounge around for a clean towel and the water’s temperature had been lukewarm—the resort’s generators were having a hard time keeping up with the demand for hot water.
My bathrobe wrapped around me, I wandered through the living room to the kitchen. The blue nylon satchel lay on the counter where I’d tossed it on my way to the shower. I still hadn’t looked at the papers inside.
Oh boy, I thought as the image of Conrad in his Slave Princess costume flashed across my brain.
First things first, I thought with a shudder. I removed the bottle of Cruzan from its shelf and lifted it toward the light, sizing up the number of remaining shots. I was about to fill my glass when I heard a knock at the door.
I stood there, holding the bottle in the air. After the day I’d had, there was no one I wished to see. But a second rap indicated a level of persistence in the knocker, so, with a sigh, I set the bottle on the counter and crossed to the entryway. Squinting through the peephole, I spied an old crippled woman in a housemaid’s uniform.
Hoping she was there to drop off a clean set of towels, I opened the door.
The maid pushed past me, limping forcefully into the living room. In one hand, she carried a rumpled paper bag. Her feet clunked across the tile floor in oversized rubber sandals as she glanced at the shot glass and the half-empty bottle on the kitchen counter. Then she turned and whispered hoarsely to me.
“Ya look lyke yewe lost somethin’.”
Her thin body was clothed in one of the resort’s standard-issue shirtdresses, but the garment was decidedly more tattered and frayed than those worn by the rest of the women. She had a toothless mouth and frizzled gray wisps of hair. My eyes focused on the name tag pinned to her chest, which read BEULAH.
I leaned sideways as she bent toward me, her brown eyes studying me intently.
I tried to form a reply to her strange introduction, but my throat suddenly dried up. The air died inside my lungs, leaving me with no source of oxygen. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
“Fat man took ’eem,” Beulah wheezed. She stepped back and licked her cracked lips, releasing me from her hypnotic hold.
“The fat man?” I asked in bewilderment after gulping in a deep breath. The image that immediately came to my mind couldn’t possibly be the man to which she was referring.
Beulah stretched her hands out into the air and waddled back and forth in front of the kitchen counter. Then she crossed her arms over her chest, tilted her head to one side, and said sof
tly, “Thuh wone who brought ya here.”
“The fat man took—who?” I managed to gasp out through my surprise.
“Your boy,” she replied.
She raised a bony hand to her head and wiggled her fingers above her thinning scalp. It took me a moment to interpret her gesture; she was mimicking Jeff’s wild, frizzy hair.
“Ya kin steel cat’ch up to heem—if that’s what yewe want.”
I shook my head in confusion, struggling to understand her meaning.
Beulah pointed a knobby finger toward the blue nylon satchel. She sighed, as if disappointed in me.
“You didn’t look een thuh bag.”
Tightly gripping my robe, I turned to the counter and opened the satchel. It contained a file folder with a small sheaf of papers. With a curious glance at Beulah, I pulled out the folder and perused the contents. My eyes passed over sheet after sheet of routine overtime and water taxi expenditures—each one with the same looping signature of Penelope Hoffstra—each one bearing a stamp from a police evidence file.
“Where did Conrad get this?” I asked in amazement.
As I reached the page at the end of the package, my brow furrowed with concern.
It was a log from the water taxi company the resort used, detailing its transfers and pickups. Handwritten in the margin was the number of reimbursements I’d signed for—a number that far exceeded the actual water taxi shuttles. Each trip, individually, cost less than a hundred dollars, but over the course of the last four years, the accumulated bogus runs had tallied to a significant sum.
I thought back to the endless reams of expense reports flagged with red sticky notes, and my hands began to tremble.
Sheridan hadn’t brought me here to help him with the real estate deal. He hadn’t sought me out for my legal expertise. I hadn’t been stashed away all this time in inactive exile; I’d started working for him the minute I stepped foot on the resort.
