I didn’t find the seahorse truck at any of the major hotels. I could continue my search at the smaller establishments, places similar in size to the YellowRock, or I could search the dive sites. It’d take hours to explore the parking lots of numerous small hotels scattered around the island. A search of the dive sites—dozens of them—along the coast would take nearly as long. But, I rationalized, if people were away from their rooms doing what they came to Bonaire to do—scuba dive—then the dive sites were the next logical places to check.
I drove south, along the southern coastal road, which gave access to many of the popular dive sites. The salt mounds loomed in the distance. Hopefully, Tiffany took some pictures of them and hadn’t played me. I hated the thought of her story being a ruse to borrow Arabella’s car and drive to Karpata, ultimately, it seemed, to break a promise.
White trucks, loaded with divers and equipment, passed me every few seconds going in the opposite direction. I studied them as they approached and glanced in my rearview mirror as they passed.
Most of the sites didn’t have defined parking spots, so drivers parked haphazardly along the shoreline or road. Some sites didn’t have any vehicles; some were overflowing. At the ones that did have trucks, I exited my jeep and checked the tailgates. Divers typically parked with the back end facing the sea. Much easier to drop the tailgate, gear up, and walk into the water.
After visiting half the sites along the southern road with no luck, I became frustrated. This hunt-and-search operation might be a waste of time. No guarantee the person was at a dive site right now. They could be driving around the island, eating at a restaurant, drunk at a bar, or in transit, maybe to a dive site I’d already marked off my list. Or they might be headed back to one of the resorts I’d already checked. Maybe parked at a marina, having gone out on a boat.
The proverbial needle in a haystack came to mind. But at least I was doing something. Forward movement, albeit marginally.
Or was I kidding myself?
I searched two more sites, ending with the same results. It was late, and I decided to head back to the YellowRock and develop a different approach. My method was too hit or miss, and, so far, all misses.
Still too soon to call Arabella, so I was on my own.
As I drove past a dive site called Pink Beach, a white truck passed going the opposite way. I checked my rearview mirror and saw a seahorse on the tailgate. I did a quick three-point turn and followed it to where it stopped at a site called Margate Bay.
The occupants, a man and a woman, got out, leaned against the side of the truck, and faced the sea, each holding a water bottle. The man was topless and wore a knee-length flowered swimsuit, while the woman wore a black-with-blue-accented lycra jumpsuit known as a dive skin. Both had on sunglasses and hats.
Even before speaking to them, I knew they were either American or Canadian. After a while, it became easy to tell the Americans and Canadians from the English, Dutch, Germans, and Scandinavians. Haircuts, clothing, make of dive gear, even posture were all tells. But language would make it definitive.
They appeared to be in their mid-sixties, which in the past I might’ve referred to as elderly. But with my next milestone birthday approaching fast, I had decided that “elderly” was far beyond mid-sixties.
I reached onto the floor, where the contents of my glove compartment had spilled, and grabbed some flyers about the YellowRock that I always carried to pass out to prospective clients. Not that I needed the business, but some folks, when they discovered I owned a resort, asked for information about the place.
Some companies left flyers and various advertisements on the windshields of vehicles at the dive sites, trying to entice the divers to visit their establishments. Not me. Most of those flyers eventually found their way to the ground. Or worse yet, the sea.
The flyers did, however, offer a good excuse to approach the couple leaning against the truck.
“Hi there,” I said, as I handed each of them a flyer. “Here’s some information on a hotel.”
Neither said anything, and they dropped their heads to scan the material.
After a quick moment, the man looked up. “No thanks,” he said. He gathered both flyers and handed them back to me. “We’re happy where we’re at.”
Americans, upper Midwest.
“Where you folks from?” I asked. Best to ask mundane questions first, followed by more serious ones.
“Grand Forks,” the woman said. “North Dakota.” She accentuated and drew out the ko part of the word.
“Enjoying your stay?” I asked.
The man took a swig of water and stared at me. He had a large USMC tattoo on his left arm and a Harley-Davidson one on his right.
The woman smiled and said, “Oh, ya, we’ve been all over the island. Bonaire is the best dive trip we’ve ever done, ya know.”
“Have you done any north dives?” I asked.
“Oh, sure,” the man said. He walked to the other side of the truck, leaned into the bed, and fiddled with some dive gear.
“We’ve done several up north,” the woman said, “but we more than prefer the southern ones.”
“Have you done Karpata?”
She scrunched her eyebrows. “Ya know, we have done Karpata. Nice dive. Lots of soft corals.”
“Do you know which day?”
She yelled over her shoulder at the man. “Hey der, hon, you know which day we did Karpata?”
He quit fiddling with the equipment for a moment. “What in the hell is this?” he asked. “Fifty questions?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Just being friendly.”
The woman turned back to me and put a finger on her chin. “To be honest, we’ve done it more than once.”
“What’s it to you, eh?” asked the man, continuing to focus on the dive gear.
“Nothing, I’m just a curious guy, I guess.”
“Well, then, how about every day. Yeah, that’s it. Every day.”
The woman nodded. “Ya, well, Ben’s right, kind of. We’ve dived Karpata a lot. No, not every day, mind you, but close to it. I couldn’t say exactly which days we did or didn’t.”
“I’m actually helping a friend of mine. She lost some dive gear and we’re trying to find it. When you were there, did you see a young girl with pink gear, fins, and mask? A wetsuit with pink accents on the sides?” I ran my hand down the side of my body.
They eyeballed each other a moment. He shrugged and she turned back to me.
“Nope, don’t remember anyone like that,” she said.
“Anything else, there?” the man said. He dropped the tailgate and pulled some tanks out of the truck bed. “Speaking of diving, that’s what we’re about to do.” Without looking at his wife, he said, “You ready, Sophie?”
“Karpata is such a beautiful dive. We’ll do it again, more than likely before we go home,” the woman said. She went to the rear of the truck bed and began assembling her gear.
Trucks drove past, some going north; some south. The sun was high off the horizon, with lots of daylight remaining, and up the shore, vehicles entered and left various dive sites. None of them had a seahorse on the tailgate. I had found my needle in the haystack, but was it any help?
Across the street, a small, knee-high cyclone spiraled dirt and small pieces of gravel a few yards down the shoulder before dying out. Bonaire has a constant wind from east to west, and it had gained strength over the last few days.
The man and woman stood at the tailgate, fiddling with their dive gear. “Nice talking to you. Have a good day.”
“Thank you,” she said. “We will. Tomorrow, we plan to visit the park and do some diving there.”
She referred to Washington-Slagbaaii National Park, a preserve on the north end of Bonaire that covers almost one-fifth of the island. Several secluded beaches and dive spots are within its boundaries, along with numerous hiking and nature trails.
I walked toward my Wrangler but couldn’t resist the urge to offer some advice. I tu
rned, and said to the woman, “Be careful if you go to Karpata again.”
They both stopped what they were doing.
“Oh, yeah?” the man asked.
“The wind has picked up. Heavier wind can make the entry a little difficult.”
“Not from a boat,” he said.
“What?”
The man shook his head.
“We do Karpata from a boat,” the woman said. “We’d never do it from shore.” Her eyes widened. “We’d never chance Ben’s bad knee on those stairs, ya know.”
CHAPTER 40
I TOOK A chance and drove to Marko Martijn’s building hoping he’d be there and not working at a job site. The drill was a lead, but, at best, a long shot. I doubted any chance of tying it to the truck sabotage, but the loose end bothered me and needed following to its finish. Not sure how Marko would take seeing me. Maybe he’d consider the return of his drill a peace offering and welcome me with open arms.
I needed to do something.
Marko ran his operation from a dilapidated metal building situated on a rock-filled lot on a side street off Kaya Nikiboko Zuid. The corrugated metal curved at the top forming a half-cylindrical roof, reminding me of an old World War II aircraft hangar. Sometime in the distant past, the metal had been gray, but now rust covered nearly the entire surface.
Random lumber and concrete blocks were stacked on both sides of the building and along the dirt driveway. In the middle of the rocky yard, an old concrete mixer, rusted and scorched by the sun, leaned sideways on broken legs, its working days long gone. An old truck with flat tires, no doors, and a shattered windshield sat at the lot’s edge next to the wall separating Marko’s property from the building next door.
I parked midway up the driveway, grabbed the drill off the front floorboard, and walked toward the open, double-wide overhead door. Two men, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, were loading tools and cement bags into the bed of a dented, faded blue dually pickup truck. They stopped working as I approached and stared at me. I asked if Martijn was around, and they both pointed toward the inside of the building. I strolled through the door.
The temperature inside was ten degrees cooler than outside. The length of the building, coupled with the open front door and back doors, caused a wind tunnel effect. Large, round lights hung from the ceiling rafters and swayed rhythmically in the breeze. None of the bulbs worked. Not sure if they were switched off or burned out.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw Marko walking in my direction. He wore an identical outfit to the one from a few days ago, and cement dust still covered his clothes and exposed skin. His dreadlocks needed a good shampoo as well. Wiping his dirty hands on a dirty white cloth towel, we stopped two feet apart.
He balled the towel and tossed it to the side, at a trash can overflowing with garbage and construction debris, falling two feet short of the pile.
He folded his arms across his chest and took a deep breath. “What do you want?”
So much for the warm, open-arms greeting.
I raised my hands in a surrender fashion. “I come bearing gifts.” I handed him the drill. He held it in one grungy hand, while wiping off some of the dust and dirt with his other grungy hand. He pressed the trigger and the motor hummed for a moment.
“Where did you find this?” he asked.
“You tell me.”
“What does that mean?”
“I found it this morning in my jeep. I thought you might know how it got there.”
Head shaking, his arm dropped to his side. “It was stolen.”
“When?”
“I do not know for sure. We noticed it missing a couple of days ago.”
We were both quiet for a minute. A mangy black mutt walked over and sniffed my sandals and feet. It wagged its tail and raised its nose at me, but after a moment, disappointed in my lack of response, wandered off through the door into the sunlight.
“I think it was used to sabotage my jeep and cause an accident,” I said. “An accident that put a police officer in the hospital.”
He slowly smiled. “Your woman cop, maybe?”
I squirmed a bit and said, “Yeah, my woman cop.” I had never referred to Arabella in those terms before. I took a deep breath, thankful she wasn’t here.
“I do not know anything about that. Why did you bring it to me? If it is part of a crime, the police should have it, no?”
“I don’t know.” I laid my best smile on him. “Shame to see a good tool go to waste.”
“Thank you.” No smile. His face remained stern. “I thought you might be here to cause trouble with me.”
“Marko,” I said, shaking my head. “I thought we were friends.” I spread my hands in front of me, palms up.
One of the guys from outside yelled something in Papiamento. Marko waved at them, never taking his eyes from me.
“I heard you were beat up,” he said.
Damn small island.
I didn’t like the term “beat up” especially when it applied to me. It may have been accurate, but that doesn’t mean I accepted it. Or liked it.
“Yeah, a couple of nights ago.” I pointed at the drill. “About the same time someone used that drill on my jeep.”
“It was not me,” he said, fixing me with a blank stare, bewildered.
“I know.”
“If I beat you up, you would not be walking now.”
I knew that, too, but didn’t admit it. “Any idea who?”
His body tightened, and he stuck out his jaw. He took a step forward. “How would I know that?” He held the drill up. “Just like how would I know about the drill?”
“People talk, maybe you heard something.”
He stood there.
I sighed. “If you do, I’d appreciate you letting me know.”
He yelled something in Papiamento to the guys outside, and a moment later an engine fired to life. I walked out the overhead door and past the two guys with the cigarettes hanging from their mouths, still loading tools and cement bags into the bed of the idling, faded blue dually. A moment later the door hinges creaked as someone got into the driver’s side of the truck. Within a few seconds, as I walked toward my Wrangler, the truck pulled alongside me.
Out the driver’s-side window, Martijn said, “I still want my money.”
“I still want the work done. Finish the work, and you’ll get the money.”
He hit the gas and sped up, driving around the Wrangler and onto the road.
CHAPTER 41
HEADED SOUTH TOWARD the YellowRock on the one-way through the business district, I sat, idling, in the Wrangler on Kaya C.E.B. Hellmund. Three trucks, lined up one after the other, were stopped ahead of me causing a mild traffic jam.
The one directly in front of me had four people in the cab and two in the bed. Arms hung out all the windows, and the guys in the back were shirtless, turning a crispy red, assisted by spray-on tanning lotion, which they applied at each stop. The drivers crept forward a few feet every minute or so, stopping to allow everyone a look at the sea or to point at one of the restaurants.
I’d driven this road countless times and was familiar with all the sights but still enjoyed the scenery. The sea was on my right with sailboats and fishing boats moored at the reef’s edge. Fishermen cleaned their catch on the piers, pelicans and sandpipers swooping down at the sea to gobble the guts and other discards. The birds shrieked and squealed either in triumph or defeat, depending on the success of their swoop.
Restaurants, T-shirt shops, and bars lined the left side of the road supplying every consumable, trinket, or beverage a tourist or cruiser desired. Most of the restaurants were open-air, so the aromas swirled and meshed together as they filtered across the street.
I peered into Vinny’s. The place was nearly empty, except for a few customers occupying the tables near the sea rail, and Jan sitting at the end of the bar watching the TV screen. I honked and Jan waved, not bothering to turn around. Everyone honked at Jan. He quit turning
around years ago.
Chuck’s apartment was to my left on the second floor. His balcony was a jumble of drying laundry, a couple of lawn chairs, and an old, rusted barbeque grill, which he hadn’t used since the Wright brothers’ first flight. No sign of Chuck, but two cops strolled out the street-level door that led to his apartment stairs. I didn’t recognize either of them.
Traffic finally moved, and I turned on the next side road and parked. I doubled back to Chuck’s and up the stairs. He answered the door after my first hard knock.
“What’d they want?” I asked.
Chuck motioned me inside. He hadn’t shaved; unusual for him. He wore a gray Budweiser T-shirt with a dark stain down the front and blue workout-type shorts with a faded, peeling USAF emblem.
A young Bonairian woman, wearing nothing but a large white T-shirt, leaned against the kitchen counter holding a glass of red wine. I recognized her as a bartender, but I couldn’t remember where. Her name might’ve been Anna. When I walked further into the apartment, she finished her wine and went into the bedroom.
“You busy?” I asked.
Chuck shook his head. “She wants to hang out for a while.” He shrugged. “Did you get a good look? Hell, I’m not going to argue.”
The apartment was a mess. My place would never win the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but at least I occasionally picked up dirty clothes and cleaned the dishes. Old food containers and empty beer bottles cluttered the kitchen counter and coffee table. Dirty, torn sheets hung over the windows employed as makeshift curtains, and a bead of dark mold adorned the seam where the tile floor met the plaster walls. Streams of sunlight, sneaking in through the filthy sliding doors leading to the balcony, illuminated the dust particles suspended in the air, thrashed around by the dust-caked ceiling fan.
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