by Tom Savage
Diablo was nearby; Nora could feel his presence. Now she would have to find him. If her hunch was right, she was going to need a boat.
Chapter 29
Lunch was served in the guesthouse’s dining room, which was a formal place dating back to the old days of colonists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The oak-paneled walls and polished marble floor were intact, and Nora suspected the big crystal chandelier and the long mahogany table were also here at the beginning. It was the only room in the house that hadn’t received the special touch of its new owners.
Nora met Chloe’s husband, Dirk, at lunch. A tall, solidly built man in overalls and a T-shirt with shoulder-length white hair and a full beard framing his deeply tanned face, Dirk was as laid-back and easygoing as his wife. Nora and Ellie learned from the conversation over Violet’s fish tacos that Dirk was the reason they owned this grand old mansion. He’d been the hell-raising, motorcycle-riding, pot-smoking black sheep of a famous Main Line Philadelphia family, and he’d come into a huge fortune. This didn’t interest him in the least, except that it financed his escape from the Main Line with Chloe so they could pursue their mutual passion for painting, live on a tropical island as they’d always fantasized, and fulfill Chloe’s dream of running her own guesthouse.
Violet joined them for lunch at the long table. She was in charge of the place, specifically the bright orange-and-yellow kitchen. She was a small, slight woman about Chloe’s age, a native Martinican, and Nora could see in her where Eb got his diminutive stature and omnipresent grin. The pretty purple cottage behind the mansion was her home with Saul and Eb, and she mentioned that Eb’s bedroom was a tribute to all things Harry Potter. She and Saul had raised the boy as their own ever since he was two, when their daughter and her good-for-nothing husband had taken off for parts unknown. When Nora asked where Saul was, Violet waved toward the beach. Fishing, apparently.
The final person at the table was a dark-haired, wild-eyed, intense young French-Canadian man named Norman. He was holed up in room one upstairs, emerging only for meals, and he didn’t talk much. Chloe informed Nora and Ellie that he was writing a novel that was going to change the face of the publishing industry. He had nearly four thousand pages so far; he’d been working on it for all of the six summers he’d been coming here from his home in Toronto. He couldn’t write in Toronto because the energy wasn’t positive; he preferred the karma here in Martinique.
After lunch, Dirk went off to paint in the big shed beside the cottage, Norman vanished into his room, and Nora and Ellie were shown to their rooms, which made them smile. Nora’s room was a symphony of psychedelic flower patterns, while Ellie’s was an even louder symphony in purple and green paisley. They settled in, then went back downstairs and outside, to the beach.
They found Eb and his grandfather at the boat Nora had seen earlier. The gray sand was moist from the rain, and the clouds above the beach promised more rain at any time. As they approached the identically dressed old man and boy near the waterline, Nora noticed two things: The boat was bigger than she’d thought, and the old man was not well.
Saul was inspecting the canvas sail furled at the bottom of the single mast in the wood boat, which Nora gauged to be about fifteen feet long. It was basically a tub with a tiller, rudder, and anchor, but it had an ancient-looking Evinrude outboard motor attached as well. Two benches crossed the space behind the mast, and two fishing poles lay under them. A thick hemp fishing net was piled high in a long wooden box near the stern. Nora didn’t know a lot about fishing, but she knew that this craft—the Violet, of course—was small and simple. She wondered if Saul had ever caught much in it.
Not that it mattered: Saul’s fishing days were over. She and Ellie observed from a distance as the old man made his inventory. He finished checking the sail and went to see about the outboard motor. Eb accompanied him as he moved, steadying him in the boat with a firm grip on his arm. Saul occasionally muttered something, and Eb would nod and reply. At one point, Eb looked over at the two of them on the sand and smiled, then turned his attention back to the task at hand.
Nora was beginning to think she and Ellie should maybe take a walk toward the main part of town when the little ritual in the beached boat came to an end. Saul checked the box of netting and both poles, and then Eb murmured something to him and pointed off toward the guesthouse across the road. The old man nodded, and Eb helped him climb out of the boat. Eb took his arm again, and they came toward Nora and Ellie.
“Grand-père, voici les femmes américaines qui sont arrivées à la maison aujourd’hui,” Eb said, grinning. “Ladies, here is my grandfather, Saul.”
“Bonjour, Saul,” Ellie said.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” the old man whispered in careful English, and he nodded to them. “Welcome to Martinique. You will please excuse me; I must go inside now.” He turned to his grandson. “À demain, Eb.” With a smile, he moved slowly but steadily away across the road to the guesthouse.
Eb watched him go, then turned to face them. “He will not let me take him to the house; he always goes alone. He comes here every day, you see, to—to be sure of his boat. But he cannot any longer go in the sea with it, you understand?”
“Yes,” Nora said. “We understand.”
“He will sleep now,” Eb said, “and tomorrow we will do this again.” He grinned. “Come, I show you the town!”
He raced off down the strand with such exuberance that they were compelled to follow. Nora looked around as they walked toward the center of the harbor, thinking that this must be a dull place for children. She wondered where the other children were, and why Eb didn’t seem to have friends his own age. He was evidently alone or with his grandfather much of the time. She wondered where he attended school; there must be an elementary school nearby. When he slowed down and doubled back to walk with them, she asked him that.
“Oh, l’école,” he muttered, and his smile disappeared. He jabbed a thumb up toward a big white structure above the first row of beachside buildings. “Là.” Nora looked, noting that there was a large, fenced-in playground beside the school. This was summer, of course, but even now she could see quite a few children there, playing some sort of football game, maybe soccer.
“Do you ever play there?” she asked him.
He frowned. “No, madame, they do not let me play with them; they say I am too small.”
“Nonsense,” Ellie said.
“No, it is truth. I am not big as the other boys who are the same year as me, even younger ones. They are all taller, even those who have nine years, and I have twelve years! They laugh when I try to play. They call me petit Ebenezer and tell me go away.”
Nora worked with young adults at the university where she taught acting, but even at their ages, they could be incredibly cruel. Twelve-year-olds could be particularly brutal to anyone they regarded as weak or different, especially when they were in a pack, and there wasn’t much any adult could do about it. She knew that it bothered Eb more than he let on.
“So, what do you do all day long?” she asked him.
“Oh, I look at everything. Everything in the town! I know everybody, and they know me. I see what it is everyone is doing every day. I watch the fishermen go out and come back with their boats, and the people in the shops and restaurants. I learn all the names and the faces. I can tell you who anybody is in Ste-Marie, just from looking at them! Monsieur Laroque, our policeman—he all of the time finds me and asks me where somebody is today, and I can always tell him. I learn the faces of all the strangers, the tourists and the businesspeople. I can remember them all!”
“Wow, that’s quite a talent,” Ellie said. “You should work with me.”
“Why?” Eb asked her. “What do you do, mademoiselle?”
Ellie winked at him. “My boss is a private detective. He could use a man like you.”
Eb stopped walking and turne
d to stare at her. His eyes had widened, and his mouth fell open. For once, he was speechless.
But not for long.
“A detective?” he cried. “Like in la tay-vay? Like Monsieur Maigret and Monsieur Poirot? Oh, that would be a great thing! A detective!” He thought about it a moment. “Yes, I could be the detective, too, with my knowing all the faces of everybody. That would be very good!”
Nora watched him. An idea had just arrived in her head, spurred by Eb’s enthusiasm. She had photos in her original CIA-issue phone, and Ellie had others. Between them, they had pictures of everyone involved in their case. She looked over at Ellie, who was apparently thinking the same thing, then back at the beaming child.
“Eb,” Nora said, “how would you like to play a game? A detective game?”
Chapter 30
Nora was back in the sidewalk café from two days ago, under an umbrella at a table by the waterfront road. And not a moment too soon: The rain had begun again, lightly at first but now becoming more forceful. The wind from the Atlantic blew the raindrops in their faces, and the gray surface of the water was alive with long lines of foam. The islet in the harbor had all but vanished in the downpour, and Nora hoped the rain would let up soon. She needed to be able to see the horizon. Moreover, she needed Eb to be able to see it.
But first, the amenities: two scoops of chocolate ice cream, a plate of crunchy pirouette flutes, and a Coca-Cola with extra ice. Nora ordered peppermint tea—they didn’t have chamomile—and Ellie had a glass of white wine. She and Ellie stared at the mountain of sugar on the table before Eb, and Nora knew they were thinking the same thing: Please don’t let this spoil his dinner tonight, or we’ll never hear the end of it. Violet or Chloe—or both—will be furious.
Eb dug in with gusto. The ice cream disappeared and the cookies dwindled. At one point, a wet yellow Labrador retriever arrived to sit beside him on the sidewalk, and two of the flutes were slipped under the table. The dog crunched them, swallowed, and lay down for a nap out of the rain. Nora watched the child, and felt sad and angry at the thought that he was the designated whipping boy for his classmates, simply because he had a funny name and wasn’t as big as the others. He was such a nice kid.
When the feast was gone, Nora pulled out her old phone and began. “Eb, Ellie and I have pictures we’ve taken in the last few days, and I want you to look at them and tell us if you recognize any of the people in them.”
His face lit up. “Oh, yes, I can do that! I know all the people here in Ste-Marie.”
Nora shook her head. “These pictures weren’t taken in Ste-Marie, but I want you to see if any of the people have been here recently, okay?”
“Okay.” He jumped to his feet and came around the table to stand beside Nora’s chair.
She found her photo file and began thumbing through it from the beginning. Miami, Jeff, Jeff, the ship, more Jeff. She stopped at her first photo of the Lamonts, on chaises at the ship’s pool. “Do you know them?”
Eb studied the photo a moment; then his face lit up. “I know her. She was here two days ago, looking out at the sea.”
“That’s right!” Nora said.
“And she was here again yesterday,” Eb continued, “at the marina. She got in a boat.” He pointed down the beach to the south, the opposite direction from the guesthouse. Nora could see a marina in the distance.
“Yesterday,” she said, and she looked over at Ellie. Then she pushed on. She thumbed more photos: Jeff, Jeff, San Juan, El Morro. She showed him the photos of the two Carmens on the battlements of the castle.
“Oh, yes,” Eb said immediately. He pointed to Carmen Lamont. “That is the lady from before.” Now he pointed to the other woman. “And that is Carmen.”
Nora stared at him. “You know her name?”
“Yes, I have heard the men call her that.”
“What men?” Nora asked.
“The men in the boat with her. There is one named Marcel and one named Zeb—I remember Zeb because it is like Eb—and one other, I do not know his name but he is big and fat. They come there”—he pointed at the marina again—“for the food from the supermarché.” He pointed toward the downtown area set back from the waterfront. “Once a week, they come to the supermarché and they take away boxes. Many, many boxes.”
Ellie leaned forward. “Where does the boat come from, Eb?”
He looked at her, then at Nora. He shrugged and pointed out at the bay. “I do not know. They come in a boat.”
Nora looked over at Ellie, whose eyes were shining, and Nora wondered if her own eyes were too. This game was turning out to be more successful than she could have dreamed. She decided to hold her questions and continue. She thumbed through more photos: the port at Guadeloupe, Carmen in the marketplace. She thumbed past the single photo she’d snapped of Carmen’s attacker in Place de la Victoire, and now came Martinique. Jeff, the rum factory, Mont Pelée—
“Wait—go back,” Eb said. “Go back three, four pictures.”
Nora reversed until she came to the assassin in the plaza.
“Là! That is Marcel! He comes in the boat with Carmen and Zeb and the big fat man.”
Nora stared at the grim face of the dead would-be assassin, remembering. Marcel Arvide, thirty-eight, of Martinique…
“You’ve seen this man with Carmen?”
“Oui, madame, many times. Once a week in the boat…” Now he looked at Nora with trepidation, as though he feared he was playing the game wrong.
Nora smiled reassuringly at him. “You’re doing splendidly, Eb.” She looked over at Ellie. “Show him Gangsta Guy.”
Ellie picked up her phone and went through her photos. “Here.” She extended her phone to Eb. In the picture, Gangsta Guy stood on the corner across from the detective agency, photographed from above—Ellie had been on the balcony porch. Eb peered at the face in the photo, and he grinned.
“This is Zeb!” he cried, triumphant, so loud that he woke the sleeping dog. It came out from under the table, staring at them and wagging its tail.
Nora shut her eyes, thinking. So, the assassin was Marcel and Gangsta Guy was Zeb, and Other Carmen arrived here in a boat once a week with them, for boxes of food. Lots of food…
Ellie was ahead of her. Before Nora could make her next request, Ellie was holding out her phone again.
“Look at this man, Eb,” Ellie said. “Do you know him?”
Nora stared. It was Ken Nelson’s close-up photo of the café table on the waterfront in Fort-de-France. Eb studied the dark, scowling face for a long moment, then shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I do not know this man.”
Now Ellie thumbed back through her file. She held up a photo of a man Nora had never seen before, a sixtyish white man with a gray crew cut and a fleshy, deeply tanned face. Nora guessed that this was Ellie’s boss, Ken Nelson.
Eb studied this picture and nodded. “Yes, he was also at the marina. He rented a boat—four, maybe five days ago. He went away in the boat, and I did not see him return.”
Nora looked out at the water. The rain had stopped, but the clouds remained. She stood and walked across the sidewalk to the sand. The others followed her, even the dog.
She pointed. “Look out there, Eb. Do you see that little island way out there, at the horizon?”
Eb looked where she pointed. “Yes, madame, that is Shipwreck Cay.”
“Shipwreck Cay,” Nora said, gazing at the little smudge of land, barely visible in the cloudy light. “What do you know about Shipwreck Cay, Eb?”
He shrugged. “I do not know anything about it, madame; I have never been there. Nobody is allowed to go there. It is a private island, owned by very rich people, more rich than Dirk and Chloe! Grand-père says Shipwreck Cay is where many ships have been lost long ago, and that is why they call it that. He says the Devil lives there. ‘C’est le dom
aine du Diable, Îlet Naufrage.’ That is what Grand-père says.”
Nora turned to stare at him. “What? What did you say?”
“I said, my grandfather thinks the Devil lives on that—”
“No, the name. You called it a French name. What was it?”
The child blinked up at her. “It is Îlet Naufrage—this is French for Shipwreck Cay.”
Nora looked out at the distant island again, remembering the intercepted message: “D meeting with CL tomorrow night 9PM IN. Watch and report.”
D for Diablo.
CL for Carmen Lamont.
IN for…Îlet Naufrage.
Nora smiled. Her hunch had been right. She had found them.
Chapter 31
First things first, Nora thought.
“Eb, I want you to be a detective for us. We need some information, and we need you to get it. Can you help us?”
She needn’t have asked: Eb was beside himself. Even the Lab seemed excited at the prospect. The boy and the dog led the way down the waterfront to the marina as Nora explained his mission. When they arrived at the complex of docks and wharves extending out into the water, the two women waited near the entrance by the main office while boy and dog marched away among the various vessels berthed there. Nora saw a lot of pleasure boats, with a smattering of fishing trawlers and, out at the farthest slips from shore, two luxury yachts.
Eb ran along a dock, then turned into another one and ventured farther away, the dog at his heels. He stopped at a certain point, gazing at a particular craft, a big speedboat. He and the dog turned around and ran all the way back to where Nora and Ellie waited.
“It is here!” Eb announced, and the dog gave a happy bark. “The boat that is called Chanson du Soleil is here again. The man must be here too, yes? I have detected it!”
Nora was about to reply when a sudden blast of music exploded from Eb’s pocket: the Harry Potter movie theme. He pulled out his phone and spoke. He nodded and said, “Oui, madame,” then put the phone away. “That is Chloe. I must go back now—she is expecting a new guest, and I must be there to take the suitcases. My job. I am sorry, madame—I hope I have done good detecting for you.”
