Afoot on St. Croix (Mystery in the Islands)

by Hale, Rebecca M.

  The man who stepped from behind the wheel had a sturdy muscular build, the physique of someone who ate three square meals a day—and none of them out of the refuse pile.

  The coconut vendors nodded a wary welcome. The newcomer was a regular on the boardwalk, although he rarely traveled solo. He was usually accompanied by a few thuggish friends and several scantily clad women with bright garish makeup. No one knew his real name, but everybody called him Nova, short for Casanova. He was a beautiful, brawny man—and his reputation with the ladies was known throughout the island.

  “Mic, Currie,” he called out, motioning for the men to join him at the truck.

  The pair looked quizzically at each other, surprised that Nova knew their names and even more shocked that he wanted to speak with them.

  After a mutual shrug, Mic and Currie walked over to the parking area.

  The trio leaned against the pickup’s dented hood for a few minutes of casual conversation before Nova got down to business.

  “So, you fellas wanna make some real money?”

  Currie cleared his throat and cracked his knuckles. He tilted his head, yawning as if he were weighing the proposal against his other (nonexistent) options. It was a carefully performed act, one in which Currie took great pride. He was the designated negotiator for his team.

  “What kinda money?” he asked, slowly scratching his round chin with a stubby finger, trying to mask his keen interest.

  Nova chuckled at the poorly veiled posturing. “More than you’re making selling stolen coconuts,” he replied with a cynical grin.

  “Hey, hey,” Mic cut in, strutting back and forth like an offended rooster. He wagged his finger in Nova’s face. “These aren’t stolen, my friend. Oh, no. They’re liberated. This here’s freedom fruit, I tell you.” He strung out the next phrase, emphasizing each syllable. “Re-vol-ution-ary co-co-nuts.”

  Rolling his eyes, Currie pushed Mic out of the way. All the earlier talk about pork chops had woken the hunger in his belly. It was time to cut to the chase.

  “What’ch you want us to do?”

  Nova’s handsome face broke into a shining smile. His dark skin gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight, the near-perfect complexion hiding the shadows beneath.

  “I’ve got a job for you two over in Fred’sted.” He gestured to the truck’s rear cargo bed. “Hop in.”

  Mic and Currie looked at each other, communicating with their eyes. The decision took only seconds to reach.

  “We’ll do it,” Currie said eagerly. The two men ran back to the club entrance to scoop up their supply of coconuts. One by one, they fed the green balls into a mesh bag they’d lifted from the dive shop at the opposite end of the boardwalk.

  “Mic, don’t forget that one over there,” Currie cautioned, pointing to a dusky corner of the nightclub where the last coconut had rolled.

  As Mic scrambled after the rogue fruit, Currie called out sarcastically.

  “It’s your fault it’s run off like that. Ya’ve given it cra-zee notions about its in-de-pen-dence.”

  ~ 11 ~

  Self-Sufficient

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Mic and Currie sat beside each other in the bed of the pickup truck, their backs leaning against the rear of the cab as it bounced over the pothole stricken pavement.

  After winding out of Christiansted’s thicket of one-way streets, the truck merged onto Centerline Road, the slower of two east-west arteries that ran across the length of the island.

  The alternative route, Highway 66, provided the primary access to the airport, circumnavigating the island’s main commercial center, and boasted the highest posted speed limit within the US Virgin Islands. While traffic had to slow for intermittent stoplights, stretches of the road were marked up to fifty-five miles per hour.

  Currie preferred Centerline’s more leisurely option. He rested an elbow on the truck’s left side railing, taking in the sights. Without transportation of his own, it had been over a year since he’d been to the other side of the island—or, for that matter, outside of Christiansted. He and Mic had been sleeping on benches in the park beside the Danish fort for the last month and a half.

  The truck passed a spattering of grocery stores, gas stations, and fast food restaurants offering burgers and fried chicken; then the road transitioned to a more rural, residential mix.

  Mahogany trees at least two hundred years old lined the thoroughfare, cooling the ground below. The spreading limbs reached high over the pavement. In places, the branches on either side almost met in the middle.

  Currie gazed up at the greenery, taking comfort in nature’s protective canopy. He sighed, enjoying the scene. For all its problems, this island was his home, the only one he had ever known.

  •

  LIKE MOST CRUCIANS, Currie was a fiercely independent, self-reliant individual. It was a trait that had been passed down through the generations, one that was firmly imprinted on the modern day mind-set.

  The temperament had its roots in the colonial era, when St. Croix was the workhorse of the Danish West Indies, producing the bulk of the territory’s sugar export. The barrels had been traded for a range of commodities, from mercantile to foodstuffs, providing everything the island’s residents needed to survive the Caribbean’s harsh, humid climate.

  Over the years, St. Croix gradually transitioned away from that agricultural foundation. Sugar distillation and oil refinery facilities moved in, providing steady jobs, a reliable source of power, and, most important, a free flow of rum. Crucians took great pride in their island’s economic diversity, particularly the development of its non-tourism-related industries.

  Of all the Virgins, Santa Cruz was the least reliant on the ever-fickle vacation business. At least a third of its residents were employed, either directly or indirectly, by the mammoth refinery on the island’s south shore. Another third found work in the wide-ranging government sector. Tourism swept up the remainder.

  This much-touted diversity and perceived self-sufficiency, however, belied an economic base that was far more fragile than the numbers let on.

  Currie gazed out at the island as the pickup bumped along. They passed numerous landmarks from his life, familiar sights that were in equal parts pleasing and painful to behold.

  In the hard luck of his twenty-seven years, he had worked on the bottom rungs of all three of the island’s economic sectors. He had failed miserably in each one, multiple times over.

  •

  CURRIE TILTED HIS head back, letting the hot breeze hit his face. His thoughts shifted to the nebulous work assignment waiting at the end of the pickup ride.

  As a rule, he generally preferred self-employment. After many aborted attempts to fit into the regular workforce, he found he got into a lot less trouble if he rowed his own boat. He hoped he and Mic hadn’t made a mistake throwing in their lot with Nova.

  As the truck braked for a stoplight, Currie peeked through the cracked glass in the pass-through window at the back of the cab.

  He watched as Nova drummed his hands against the steering wheel, impatiently waiting for the signal to change. The radio was tuned to a local reggae station, the volume turned to its highest bass-thumping setting.

  Nova didn’t seem to notice Currie’s head looking through the back window—or the coconut vendor’s eyes sliding toward the black canvas bag that lay on the passenger seat.

  With the release of the light, Nova pounded the gas pedal, and the truck surged forward. The sudden momentum combined with the jolting bump of yet another pothole caused the mouth of the bag to slide open—revealing the heavy metal handle of a gun.

  Currie quickly returned his gaze to the truck’s back bed. Weaponry was not an uncommon sight on the island; the populace of Santa Cruz was heavily armed.

  But still, it gave him pause.

  From the right side of the truck bed, Mic rubbed his stomach a
nd hollered over the roar of the engine. “Hope we make it back to Chri’sted in time for the pork chops.”

  Currie smiled his response, hoping Mic didn’t pick up on his anxiety.

  He was beginning to think they might have bigger problems to worry about than missing dinner.

  ~ 12 ~

  An Eerie Intuition

  ABOUT A HUNDRED yards off the Christiansted boardwalk, a woman in a black cloak and headscarf walked down the narrow hallway on the top attic level of the Comanche Hotel. The green high-heeled shoes on her feet tapped lightly against the wooden floor as she entered room seventeen, turned, and locked the door behind her.

  With her two youngest children secured in the hotel’s second-floor office, playing under the watchful eye of their babysitter, the woman had plenty of time to take care of the afternoon’s business, collect her kids, and get back home before her husband returned from work. If everything went according to plan, he need never know that she’d been to Christiansted that day—much less with whom she’d been meeting.

  After flicking the wall switch for the ceiling fan, the woman circled the room’s perimeter, opening the windows on the two exterior walls. The meager cross breeze added little ventilation to the stuffy room, but she didn’t mind the heat. She had specifically requested this unit knowing it was likely to be warm.

  She’d chosen this location for its quiet isolation from the rest of the hotel, which was, in any event, only partly occupied. Despite the Comanche’s unique historical niche, it had a tough time competing with the other boardwalk-area hotels for the island’s dwindling numbers of tourists.

  Dusting her hands together, the woman approached a wooden wardrobe pushed against the tallest interior wall. She pulled open the swinging doors of the wardrobe’s upper compartment, unhooked her cloak, and hung it inside. Untying her scarf, she looped it over the bar of another hanger. Then she closed the doors, pressing the slats to hook the inner latch.

  Smoothing out the length of her tailored green dress, the woman turned to check her reflection in a decorative wall-mounted mirror. Pivoting, she tugged at the tight-fitting silk fabric to pull the seams into alignment.

  Satisfied with the dress adjustments, she shifted her attention to her makeup. Stepping into the bathroom, she removed several small containers from her purse and set them on the edge of the sink. After dotting her nose and cheeks with powder, she used an eyeliner pen to expertly trace the contours of her lids. Next came the lipstick, which she rolled slowly around the edge of her mouth, coating the surface with a deep-red paste. As a final touch, she picked up a small glass vial shaped in a seashell design and spritzed a fine mist of perfume against her neck and wrists.

  The woman gazed at her reflection and nodded with approval before reflexively arching her eyebrows. She’d forgotten one important item.

  Reaching back into her purse, she fished out a foil-wrapped pack of breath mints. She popped a disc onto her tongue and swirled it around, waiting for the sharp wintergreen flavor to mask the residual nicotine from her earlier smoke in the courtyard.

  Charlie, she remembered, had always hated the smell of cigarettes on her breath.

  •

  STROLLING INTO THE bedroom, the woman reached behind her head and unclasped a pin that had been holding her hair up in a bun. She shook her head, sending a honey-brown mane cascading down past her shoulders. After a few smoothing strokes with her brush, she gathered her hair into a looser knot and reattached the clip. She gave the hairdo a quick check in the mirror, pulling out a few wispy strands around her forehead for seductive effect.

  There, she thought, pleased with her appearance. I’m ready.

  •

  WITH A SIGH, the woman moved to take a seat on the bed. But as she crossed the room, she felt a slight breeze whisper against the back of her neck.

  She froze in place, struck by an unexpected shudder.

  Goose bumps prickled her skin as an odd sensation swept over her psyche, a sudden inkling that something in her world had just been knocked off kilter. Somehow, her life’s neat, rigid order had been thrown into disarray.

  Perplexed, she paced a slow circle through the room, her green heels clicking on the floor’s wooden planks.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, trying to calm her nerves.

  There were dozens of routine explanations for the errant breeze: the ceiling fan, the open windows, perhaps there was a hidden vent in the ceiling—anything could have caused the airflow disturbance.

  But even as she tried to rationalize away her unease, she knew her apprehension was about more than a vagrant puff of wind.

  She couldn’t shake the eerie intuition that a figure from her past had just arrived on the island.

  Someone other than her troublesome ex-husband.

  ~ 13 ~

  Adam Rock

  A SHORT DISTANCE away, on the second floor of the coral-pink hotel, Adam Rock rolled his suitcase along a humid corridor, searching the numbered doors for his assigned room.

  Rock dabbed a handkerchief across his sweating brow. The air in the hallway was not much cooler than that outside the building. As he weaved from left to right, peering at the marked doorways, he carried on a one-sided conversation with the hotel’s manager.

  “Let me install just one of my machines,” he muttered wearily. “You’ll see. You won’t be able to pry your guests away from it. You can charge extra for the room. We’ll call it the Refrigerator Suite.”

  Breathing heavily, he paused outside a corner unit and checked the number hanging from the entrance.

  “This is it,” he said gratefully. Heat exhaustion had drained all his energy. He felt as if he couldn’t have walked another step.

  Rock slid his key into the slot and turned the knob, eagerly anticipating a refreshing chill on his sweat-soaked cheeks. He pushed open the door and leaned into the room, hoping for a blast of cool air.

  He was sorely disappointed. The room was hotter than the hallway.

  Pulling his suitcase inside, Rock glared despondently at the silent air-conditioning unit mounted on the wall beneath the room’s corner window. After a quick scan of the machine’s exterior, he flipped open the control panel and began fiddling with the dials and switches, to no avail.

  “Come on, please,” he begged. “Give a guy a break.”

  Rock knelt to the floor. Twisting his neck, he tried to see through a gap in the machine’s underside framing, but even from that angle, it was impossible for him to determine what had disabled the interior components.

  As a last resort, he pulled the electrical plug from the wall, counted to ten, and then reinserted the plug into its socket.

  There was no response. It seemed nothing could wake the machine.

  Frustrated, Rock slammed his hand against the metal facing.

  “Worthless piece of junk.”

  Just then, a slight hum began to rattle from deep inside the cooling unit.

  •

  WITH THE TEMPERATURE in the room slowly beginning to drop, Adam Rock set his roll-around luggage on a chair, unzipped the main compartment, and propped open the lid. He removed a pair of neatly pressed chinos, a mint-green golf shirt, and a clean pair of socks. Carefully, he laid the clean clothing on the edge of the bed.

  Unhooking a few more notches on his shirt collar, he wandered into the bathroom. He grinned at his reflection in the mirror, his face boyish despite the fringe of gray, before turning on the sink faucet and ducking his head beneath a stream of cold water.

  Feeling semi-refreshed, Rock returned to the bedroom. He took a seat on the corner of the bed and gently untied the laces of his dress shoes. Swinging his right foot up onto his left knee, he pulled off the shoe and then the sweaty sock.

  “Ahh.” He sighed with relief, wiggling his toes.

  The air conditioner was finally starting to kick in. The system gener
ated far more noise than air, but at this point, even the faint whisper of a cooling breeze received a joyful welcome.

  Dropping his bare foot to the carpet, Rock lifted his left leg and began to remove its lower coverings. After a few jerks and wiggles, the shoe popped off and dropped to the floor. With his fingers, he pushed the sock’s upper hem down toward his ankle, exposing the top of a stiff skin-colored prosthetic. A few more tugs revealed the full shape of a plastic foot.

  Rock slid the cuff of his slacks up toward his knee in order to better access his leg’s junction with the artificial limb. Grunting and groaning, he unhooked the straps and buckles of a large brace. Once the fittings began to loosen, he firmly gripped the false foot and rotated it sideways until, with a sucking pop, it released from his body.

  Rock let out a second sigh of relief as he held the stump of his left leg up to the air vent.

  “That’s much better,” he said, collapsing backward onto the bedspread.

  Closing his eyes, he positioned his lower appendages to receive the full force of the anemic air vent: the regular human foot and the stump, which terminated in a hard circular structure that had been hidden by the prosthetic—a cloven two-toed piece of keratin in the shape of a goat’s hoof.

  ~ 14 ~

  The Thanksgiving Surprise

  CHARLIE BAKER CONTINUED his slow, increasingly anxious pace down the boardwalk toward the sugar mill bar. A few feet from the bar’s round coral stone tower, he stepped off the boardwalk and onto the path that led to the Comanche Hotel.

  Staring across the gravel courtyard, he straightened his cap and thunked his thumb against the brim.

  If she stayed true to her word—a big if, in Charlie’s view—Mira would be waiting for him in a room on the hotel’s top floor. He could only hope that, this time, she had brought the children with her.

  After ten years of minimal interaction, he was about to have his third meeting with Mira in under six months. The first had taken place the previous Thanksgiving, the second earlier that spring. Both instances had ended disastrously—for Charlie anyway.