Afoot on St. Croix (Mystery in the Islands)

by Hale, Rebecca M.

  In its guest brochures, the hotel claimed to have served as the childhood home of Alexander Hamilton. Details, however, of exactly when that occupancy occurred and for how long were difficult to nail down. Much like the island of his youth, the founding father’s early history was shrouded in myths and half truths.

  •

  THE HOTEL’S FRONT desk was located in a front sitting room of the original estate house, perhaps explaining the reception area’s improvised arrangement and furnishings. The front desk, a massive mahogany piece, sat in the corner farthest from the door. It was flanked by a decoratively wound rattan chair, a sturdy wooden side table, and a pineapple-shaped lamp.

  Off to the side, in front of a shuttered window, stood a tall wooden statue, presumably the hotel’s namesake Comanche—although the figure bore little resemblance to the Plains Indians of the American Southwest.

  Instead, the carving appeared to be a caricatured cross between an aborigine Carib and a Spanish conquistador.

  •

  THE MOTHER WAITED while the desk clerk called the maid who would be providing the requested sitting service. He wiped his brow as he waited for the phone line to be answered, glancing apologetically across the desk for the stifling heat.

  Screens covered the room’s open windows, but no breeze filtered in from the alley outside. A slow-churning ceiling fan offered little respite, while a freestanding fan rotating in the corner of the room served only to flutter the papers stacked on the desk. Modular air-conditioning units were available in the individual guest suites, but such cooling mechanisms were expensive to run—and not a luxury afforded the front-desk staff.

  •

  ENERGIZED BY THEIR candy-bar sugar rush and seemingly unaffected by the heat, Elena and Hassan stood in the middle of the reception area, finger-poking each other behind their mother’s back as she leaned over the front desk, anxiously awaiting word on the sitter.

  A large fly droned, buzzing between the children. Elena swatted at the bug; then she turned toward her brother.

  “Hassan,” she said, officiously wagging her finger. “When she comes for you, when she hauls you off to her lair, you’ve got only one chance to escape being eaten.”

  “Eaten? Who’s going to eat me?” he demanded, bristling at the suggestion. He crossed his arms in front of his tiny chest and then added, somewhat meekly. “And what’s a lair?”

  Elena issued a haughty, matter-of-fact response. “Don’t be silly. I told you before. The Goat Foot Woman is out there looking for little children to eat, and you’re just her type.” Her expression softened as she noticed his confused face. “The lair is where she locks up the children she’s kidnapped. It’s a top-secret location. Nobody knows where it is.”

  With a sympathetic smile, she patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry, Hassan. It’s only a matter of time. You have to be prepared.”

  The boy resisted, giving his sister a suspicious sideways glance. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  Elena tossed her pigtails indignantly. “I learnt it in school, of course.”

  Hassan hesitated. He didn’t like to give his sister any more leverage over him than she already possessed. And he certainly didn’t want her thinking she knew things he didn’t.

  But, as Elena had explained to him numerous times, the preschool he attended each morning wasn’t the same as the “real” school where she was enrolled.

  What if his sister was right? He didn’t want to miss out on any valuable information, especially if he did happen to find himself captured by the Goat Foot Woman. That was a frightening and downright disturbing proposition.

  Finally he assented. “Okay, go ahead,” he said, sighing wearily. “Tell me.”

  Elena’s green eyes sparkled with mischief. “Once she’s trapped you in her lair, and she’s about to slice you up and eat you, there’s only one way you’ll make it out alive.” She held up her index finger, pointing it at her brother’s nose. “Just one.”

  Hassan sucked in his breath, and his lower lip began to tremble. His earlier disbelief had fallen away. He was now fully engaged in the story.

  Elena paused, watching Hassan’s face turn blue from lack of oxygen. She waited until he looked as if he were about to pass out; then she swung her finger toward the wooden statue standing against the wall by the front desk.

  “You have to call on the Comanche. He’s the only one the Goat Foot Woman is afraid of. He’s the only one who can save you.”

  Hassan released his pent-up breath. With a raspy gasp, his chest heaved as he refilled his lungs.

  “He’s been hunting her for years,” Elena said, wrapping her arm around Hassan’s shoulders and turning him to face the statue. “Each night, the Indian comes to life. The wood becomes flesh, and real blood pumps through his veins. He jumps off that perch and walks right out the front door. They say he roams the streets of Christiansted, searching for the Goat Foot Woman. If she catches you, he’s the only one who can rescue you.”

  Hassan’s eyes stretched wide, and his mouth gaped open. He stared up at the statue, taking in every detail of its peculiar, rigid figure.

  The red-stained wood and broad facial features were those of a native Carib, but the clothing carved onto the body was that of a Spanish conquistador. A draping tunic layered with armor covered the statue’s torso; shiny epaulets capped its shoulders, and a domed helmet rested on its head. On the statue’s lower half, puffy, pleated pants fed into pointed boots that featured swooping, upturned toes.

  Elena watched with a big sister’s conspiring zeal as Hassan apprehensively surveyed the Comanche statue. The little boy swayed back and forth, leaning in for a closer look and then recoiling away, his curiosity overwhelmed by surges of repulsion.

  The statue’s menacing expression was far from reassuring. Eyeballs the size of eggs bulged out from the skull. Stringy black facial hair extended from swollen cheekbones and loose-hanging jowls.

  Midway down the torso, the figure’s muscular hands gripped a long staff, holding it in the air like a club that might be swung at the next guest who dared to check in to the hotel.

  With a shudder, Hassan turned and whispered to his sister. “Are you sure he’s the one who’s supposed to save me?”

  •

  BEFORE ELENA COULD answer, a plump West Indian woman with shiny brown skin entered through a side door. The mother turned from the front desk.

  “Okay, you two,” she said, bending toward her children. “You’re going to stay with this lady while I go to my meeting.” She gave her daughter a stern stare. “Don’t give her any trouble.”

  The maid smiled and nodded toward the wooden ceiling. “Come with me, little ones. We have some toys in the office for you to play with.”

  Elena charged up the stairs, eager to check out the stash of playthings. The heavyset maid hurried after her, panting as she tried to keep up. Hassan dutifully followed the pair, but as he neared the second-floor landing, he stopped and turned to look back.

  Squatting at the top of the steps, the boy peered down through the side railing’s wooden slats to the reception area below. He wanted to get one last glimpse of the Comanche, just in case he needed to call on the statue’s rescue services at some point in the future.

  After a long moment of squinting at the statue, Hassan nearly fell off the step in surprise. Anchoring his feet to the ledge, he returned his gaze to the first floor, rubbing his eyes in disbelief.

  He could have sworn the Comanche’s square head had rotated, ever so slightly, so that its bulging eyeballs were staring right at his mother.

  ~ 9 ~

  Paradise Lost

  CHARLIE BAKER TRUDGED down the boardwalk, his worn combat boots thumping across the wooden pathway as he headed toward the sugar mill tower and the turnoff for the Comanche Hotel.

  He’d been back to St. Croix twice in the last few months, but h
e was still struck by the changes.

  This was a different island than the one that had enchanted him on that first visit ten years earlier, he thought, glancing at the row of businesses—and empty lots—along the Christiansted shoreline. The decaying downtown district bore little resemblance to the amusement park fun-land he thought he remembered. This wasn’t the location that had inspired his impulsive move to the Caribbean. Or had he been that deluded?

  The Danish fort still glowed from its outcropping at the far end of the harbor, but the downtown area seemed to have lost much of its luster. The boardwalk’s wooden planks had splintered from the sun’s blistering wear; the surrounding shops had suffered from a decade’s worth of persistent economic downturn.

  Across from the seaplane hangar’s exit, he’d seen a homeless woman standing in the middle of a junk-strewn field. The old hag had stared at him as she gripped the handle of a rusted shopping cart that was, itself, loaded with rubbish.

  A few steps later, Charlie had walked by an abandoned nightclub that had once blasted its music across the harbor into the wee hours of the morning. The establishment had changed hands several times, falling into greater disrepair with each new owner. The empty shell was now occupied by a pair of vagrant coconut vendors, whose entreaties Charlie had casually waved off.

  What’s happened to this island, he wondered, sadly shaking his head.

  To be fair, Charlie conceded with a sigh, his perspective had shifted. These days, everything felt different to him, regardless of location. His time in the Caribbean had made him harsher, wiser, and far more cynical.

  It now took more than warm weather to impress him.

  •

  A DECADE HAD passed since Mira had packed up the kids and left him on that lonely thirteen-acre plot on St. Croix’s east end. Charlie had spent most of the intervening years on St. John, a much smaller island about forty miles to the north.

  The least populated of the three main holdings within the US Virgin Islands (the territory also included a small handful of tiny islands and cays), St. John boasted dozens of pristine beaches and a national park that encompassed over half of the island’s landmass. An isolated location with relatively little crime or commercial development, St. John had become a favorite holiday retreat for many Americans.

  High-end villas now dotted the hillsides above the main town of Cruz Bay, creating a collage of dramatic coral stone archways, sun-soaked balconies, and infinity-edge swimming pools that overlooked the Pillsbury Sound.

  Charlie knew the intricate details of almost every one of those buildings, their foundations, floor plans, lot slopes, and rooflines—because the majority of the structures had been built by his construction company.

  •

  CHARLIE LANDED HIS first St. John contract a few days after Mira’s departure.

  His client was an expat landowner who had already hired and fired three previous contractors before offering the job to Charlie. The project would require him to abandon several half-finished (i.e., stalled out) construction sites on St. Croix. It was a gamble, but he’d decided to take the risk. In his view, he had nothing left to lose.

  Using every last trick he’d learned during those first frustrating months in the Caribbean, Charlie threw himself into the new project. He moved his base of operations to St. John and rented a cabin at the national park’s Cinnamon Bay campgrounds. He spent every waking hour either walking the job site or on the phone to inspectors and regulatory agents. If a telephone call didn’t work, he took the ferry over to St. Thomas and planted himself in the obstructing bureaucrat’s office until they had reached a compromised solution. Money, he found in the more difficult instances, was almost always the compromise that led to the solution.

  After paying out bribes—or, depending on your perspective, additional fees—to over half of the government agencies in the territory, Charlie managed to bring that first St. John project to completion. A flood of new contracts followed, and before long, he was managing a large crew of both permanent and day laborers who were fully occupied year-round, six days a week.

  Cut off from his family, immersed in his business, and thrown into the distinct culture of a much smaller island, he slowly pulled himself back from the financial—and emotional—brink.

  •

  WHILE CHARLIE REMAINED busy on St. John, he sent a few of his workers back to St. Croix to tear down the lean-to. In its place, they built a basic but functional villa that he began renting out by the week, mostly to the local oil refinery’s visiting executives and traveling upper management.

  Using that rental income, Charlie eventually transitioned out of the Cinnamon Bay cabin and into a cinderblock house on an inland hill not far from Cruz Bay. The house had a leaky roof, faulty plumbing, and at times, it seemed there were more insects living inside the place than out. But the selling feature was a functional wraparound porch with northern views of Jost Van Dyke and the western edge of Tortola. Each night, he retired to the porch, curled up in a hammock, and watched the sunset.

  Charlie was kicked back in that swing one evening, sipping a cold beer, when he discovered a packet of divorce papers, which had arrived in that day’s mail. Hands shaking, he pulled open the envelope’s flap and removed several stiff sheets of paper stamped with legal letterhead. Scanning the communication, he sucked in his breath, as if reeling from a blow to the gut.

  The request for the marriage’s formal dissolution had arrived a year to the day from Mira’s sudden flight to Miami.

  •

  CHARLIE SPENT A long night in the hammock, staring out across the top of the dense forest that surrounded the porch. Beyond the jungled hillside stretched a black sea and, in the distant horizon, the twinkling lights of Tortola. Above it all hung an impossibly distant moon, a glowing all-knowing orb.

  He pulled out his wallet and removed the key lime pie photograph of his kids. The picture was already crumpled and worn from constant reference. Too much time had passed since he’d seen his children and held them in his arms.

  Over the course of the last twelve months, his previous life had slipped away, ebbing like the tide into a gray oblivion.

  The dedicated family man who’d traveled to St. Croix for that fateful vacation had slowly disappeared. He’d spent one too many nights sitting outside the local dive bar drinking with St. John’s resident crop of expats. He’d lost a part of himself in the tropical haze and rum-induced stupor.

  More significantly, he’d lost access to his children.

  •

  CHARLIE STAYED OUT on the porch until early morning, rocking back and forth in the hammock. With the sun’s rise, he finally returned inside. Red-eyed and exhausted, he reluctantly signed the agreement, accepting the stated alimony and giving Mira full custody of the kids.

  Every thirty days, he dutifully sent a check north to Minnesota, but for nine long years, he had no substantive contact with his family.

  Over time, Charlie carved out a niche for himself in St. John’s luxury villa market. He became the go-to guy for high-end properties with potentially tricky approval features. Despite the global recession, there was a constant flow of newcomers willing to shell out big bucks for their own private island paradise.

  Charlie was happy to take their money, but he took little joy in the prospering of his business.

  He’d long since given up on his idea of paradise.

  ~ 10 ~

  The Coconut Trade

  THE TWO COCONUT vendors stood in the entrance to the abandoned nightclub, watching as the last passenger from the afternoon seaplane passed their station without stopping. It had been a long hot day, and they had little to show for their efforts.

  “Well, Mic,” the shorter of the duo said with a weary nod at the lone dollar the Dane had given them earlier, “looks like we’re eatin’ out of the Dumpster again tonight.” He put his hands on his hips and tapped his ba
re foot against the concrete. “I really thought this idea was a winner. It should have worked out much better than this.”

  His lanky partner leaned against a concrete column. “Aw, don’t beat yourself up ’bout it, Currie. Nobody appreciates fresh produce anymore. They’re lettin’ these kids grow up eatin’ way too much junk food.” He patted his lean stomach. “Speaking of which—I would kill for a basket of French fries right about now.”

  Currie chuckled. Mic had a voracious appetite. He’d eat anything he could get his hands on, but generally speaking, the greasier the better.

  “Hey, Mic. What’s the special on the board at the brewpub tonight?”

  Mic lifted his head and sniffed the air. The bridge of his nose wrinkled; his nostrils flared. After a moment of intense concentration, he announced his findings.

  “Grilled pork chops,” he said, smacking his lips with anticipation. “Hey, Currie. We’d better get our order in to Gedda so she saves us some good cuts.”

  Currie grinned up at his friend. Mic’s dinner-menu predictions were almost never wrong, but he didn’t rely entirely on his olfactory skills. Currie knew Mic sneaked into the brewpub’s kitchen each morning to see what would be on the evening special.

  Mic stepped away from the post, stretching his long legs. “I think I’ll take a side of garlic mashed potatoes with my chops,” he said as he bent over to pick up his ragged T-shirt. After shaking the dust from the garment, he tugged it on over his head. “And a fried pickle.”

  Currie threw up his hands in protest. “Stop! You’re making me hungry!”

  •

  A BEAT-UP TRUCK pulled into the alley behind the abandoned nightclub. Mic and Currie turned as the driver, the vehicle’s lone occupant, flashed his lights and tapped the horn.