A Quarter for a Kiss (31 page)

Going down the hill was easier than coming up, though I kept my hand on the rail to keep from getting dizzy as I went. Once I reached the beach, I held the bag over my head and made my way to the boat. Tom took it from me as I climbed aboard.

“I was looking at the chart,” he said, starting up the engine. “Caneel Bay Resort isn’t too far from here.”

“Go for it,” I said, drying off with a towel and then pulling on Jodi’s batik cover-up over my suit. It fit fine, though it was a bit more colorful than I would have picked for myself.

Tom pulled out of the bay and, true to his word, we reached the resort in just a short while. This time he was allowed to pull right up to the dock to drop me off. I left him there and ran inside to find the gift shop.

There was a definite difference in the clientele here, as everything was quiet and tasteful and simply screamed “old money.” The newspaper selection was different as well. I grabbed the Sunday
New York Times,
the
Wall Street Journal,
and the
St. John Times.
I was disappointed not to find the
Washington Post,
which was the paper Nadine had used to send messages back in the ’60s, but the clerk said that I wasn’t likely to find it anywhere on the island, that most people were happy with just the local papers and the ones from New York. On my way back to the boat, I had to concentrate on the job at hand and not waste any time lingering on the gracious and stately grounds.

Back on the boat, I took the entire stack and stashed them in the underseat storage. Then I took one of the bananas and a handful of peanuts and sat down to eat.

We pulled into the cove where we were to meet Abraham about five minutes late. We looked for a dock but didn’t see one. Instead, a man waved to us from the water. To my surprise, I realized it was Abraham, out swimming.

Tom stopped the boat and I grabbed the mooring line like an expert. Abraham called something to a group of kids on the beach, and then he waded out to meet us.

“Greetings, friends!” he cried as I lowered the ladder for him. “How are you on this sunny day?”

He came aboard and shook my hand, but Tom simply gave him a smile and a wave. I handed Abraham a towel, which he took from me gratefully.

“We’re great,” I said. “Are we interrupting you from your family?”

“That’s okay. It’s my day off. We’re just limin’.”

“Limin’?”

“Relaxing. Hanging around.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Samuel, don’t put sand in your sister’s hair!”

“Are those your kids?” I asked, smiling at the sight of three small children who were playing at the waterline.

“Yes, and that is my beautiful wife,” he said proudly, pointing at a great big woman in a blue flowered wrap. She was perched on a stool in the shade, braiding the hair of a teenager who sat on a lower chair in front of her. “She charge three dollars a braid if you want to get your hair done.”

“That’s okay,” I replied. “Thanks anyway.”

“So what you got for me?”

“A surveillance recording,” I said, leading him into the cabin. “A good one.”

“Really?”

I glanced at Tom, but he was busy with the navigation charts. I knew he was respecting Abraham’s preference to deal only with me.

“This is probably all we’ll be able to do,” I said to Abraham as we stepped inside. “But then again, this might be all you need.”

We sat at the table and I pressed “Play.”

“William!”
Dianne’s voice said on the recording.
“Who was it? Did you catch them?”

“Earl’s still out on the skiff,”
the man replied.
“But so far he hasn’t found anyone.”

Abraham listened intently as I let the recording play, hearing everything including Dianne and Earl’s conversation about Merveaux and Rushkin. I didn’t press “Stop” until the voice of Earl said,
“We’ll be gone from here by Sunday.”

“There’s a little more from the next morning,” I said. “But nothing as important as that.”

“Wow,” Abraham said, leaning back against the seat. “This changes everything.”

“It does,” I agreed.

“Interpol better get on the stick. I think they are about to lose their primary suspect.”

I jumped ahead through the recording, listening for the conversation Earl and Dianne had over breakfast.

“Abraham, what’s an ‘igma’?” I asked as I scanned the file.

“A what?”

“An igma,” I said. “You’ll see.”

I found the correct spot and pushed “Play.”

“
I’ll start packing today
,” Dianne’s voice said. “
I suppose we take with us only what we can fit on an igma
.”

I pushed “Stop” and looked at Abraham’s surprised face.

He burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

Abraham laughed so hard that even Tom came to the doorway to see what was going on. Finally the sergeant got himself under control, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to laugh.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s not an
igma
,” he said, laughing again. “It’s
Enigma
. Her boat. They will take with them only what they can fit on
Enigma
.”

Thirty-Three

Poor Abraham’s family day at the beach was cut short. After a quick phone call to the station and then a brief conversation with his wife, he came back on our boat and asked us to give him a lift into Cruz Bay. He was glad to have the flash drive with the recording and the transcription, but I offered to let him take the listening station with him as well.

“As far as we know,” I said, thinking of the dog bone, “there’s still one bug left there, outside, but I don’t think you’ll pick anything up from it.”

“I should ask you if this surveillance ended up helping with your investigation too,” Abraham said as he tossed the bumper over the side.

“More than you could imagine,” I replied. “I’ll keep you posted if we turn up anything else.”

“You do that,” he said, climbing out of the boat. There was a uniformed officer at the other end of the dock, waiting to drive him home for a change of clothes and then straight to the station.

“Thanks again,” he called to us as he hurried away. I felt a surge of satisfaction that Tom and I had done a good job with our assignment for him—even if we were only paid one dollar.

We backed away from the dock and then kept our speed down as we worked our way along the shore to the harbor, where we could dock the boat while Tom went to the doctor’s office.

He thought it would be easier to walk than drive, so I kissed him goodbye then watched as he headed off toward town with his hands gingerly in his pockets. I would stay put on the boat and go through the newspapers, and maybe by the time he was back I would have discovered the when and where of the next day’s clandestine meeting.

I wasn’t sure how far and wide Dianne’s coded message had to travel, but I had a feeling her new medium for that was probably not the
Washington Post
, as it had been in the ’60s, but was instead now either the
Miami Herald
or—more likely—the
New York Times
. That was the only newspaper offered for sale in all the shops I had gone to, and my conversation with the sales clerk told me that it was probably the easiest paper to find throughout the islands.

I flipped to the classifieds, which were extensive. My best bet was merchandise because that’s how the messages had been coded before. I scanned down listings for dinette sets and purebred puppies, looking for the word “midnight.”

My eyes skipped over it at first.

Suddenly, I blinked and scanned back up.

There it was!

Midnight Cowboy DVD for sale. Call 417-0800. Ask for Thae Barthos.

Heart pounding, I crossed out every third letter in the person’s name. The meeting would be tomorrow at 8:00
A.M
. at a place called “The Baths.”

The Baths.

Something about that sounded familiar. I grabbed the Virgin Islands guidebooks I had collected and flipped through them until I found a photo of a man and a woman floating in a giant stone cave. The caption of the photo said, “Visit the Baths of Virgin Gorda, a Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience.”

According to the map, Virgin Gorda was in the British Virgin Islands, which weren’t too far away. The Baths seemed to be some sort of natural landmark there. I decided to call Tom. The sooner he was finished at the doctor’s office, the sooner we could pursue this lead—though whether we should take the info to the NSA or go straight to Abraham, I wasn’t sure. I also needed to call my father, to see what he had learned from the police in Cocoa Beach, and Stella, to see how Eli was faring.

I put everything away inside the cabin, locked up, and pulled on socks and sneakers, not knowing how far I might have to walk to find a public phone that wasn’t too public.

The woman in the little boat rental office pointed me toward the other end of the dock, so I set off in search of a phone, admiring some of the beautiful boats on my way. This harbor was huge, and the slips grew progressively bigger as I went. Near the end were the biggest boats—gorgeous, expensive yachts.

The phone was next to a set of unmanned gas pumps, and it was in an actual booth with a seat. I sat inside but left the door open for the breeze. Using a phone card, I first called Stella’s house in Florida, but, as I expected, there was no answer. I left a message, telling her the investigation was progressing and Eli was still in our prayers.

I tried the hospital next and asked for the ICU nurses’ station. They couldn’t give me any information over the phone except to say that his condition was listed as “stable.” That was definitely an improvement over “critical,” and I wondered if he was starting to show signs of consciousness. I had made Stella promise to call me if Eli came out of the coma, so I felt certain that he hadn’t.

My dad was the next call, and I was able to reach him easily for a change. He said he had spoken to Stella just last night, and Eli was still intubated but his vital signs were strong. If he remained stable for the next 24 hours, they would be moving him out of ICU and into a regular room with special nursing care. He was starting to show some mild reflex responses, which meant he might be coming out of the coma.

“I’ve talked to the OIC a few times,” my dad said, referring to the officer in charge, “but we don’t really seem to be getting anywhere.”

“Did they send you the ballistics?” I asked.

“Yeah. I got the whole crime report. Single shot from about half a block away, motel room, third floor. A Bushmaster semiautomatic.”

“They know the make and model?”

“Yeah. The gun was recovered right there in the room. No prints, of course.”

“A rifle with that kind of range?” I asked. “That had to cost close to two thousand dollars. They just left it there?”

“Sitting on the bed, plain as day. Police traced it to a gun shop in Miami, but the store there shows no record of the sale.”

“Stolen, in other words?”

“Yep. I talked to the manager of the gun shop myself. That particular rifle was a demo they had used at a gun show two days before the shooting. So it hadn’t been missing for long.”

“How about the ID on the person renting the hotel room?”

My dad snorted.

“Paid in cash. Checked in under the name ‘A. Nonimous.’”

“Some kind of joker.”

“You got it.”

The phone booth was becoming hot, so I stood and tried to step outside, but the metal cord wouldn’t quite let me reach.

“Who do the police there suspect?” I asked.

“They seem to be focusing on one of Stella’s children, but they won’t say which one. I think it’s that older boy. I talked to him on the phone yesterday, and it sounds like he’s moved in and taken over. Couldn’t be more solicitous—and couldn’t sound more phony.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw a group of people walking in my direction. I stepped back into the booth and closed my eyes, trying to concentrate.

“It’s not one of Stella’s kids,” I said. “The cops there don’t have all the facts. They don’t understand that this case encompasses everything from the NSA to Interpol. It’s not a simple situation.”

My dad let out a low whistle.

“Please tell me you’re being careful,” he said.

I glanced toward the trio of boaters, surprised to see Jodi among them. She was climbing aboard a nearby boat, and with her was Fawn and Zach. I stood and tried to give them a wave, but they didn’t see me.

“I need to go, Dad,” I said. “Thanks for looking into things. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Posted?” he cried. “You haven’t told me anything!”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s complicated, and there’s still so much we don’t understand.”

“Okay, honey. Listen, your mom told me about you and your boss.”

My breath caught. What a time to bring that up! I sat back down on the little bench and watched Jodi and her friends prepare their vessel for departure.