Blue Moon (15 page)
A shout from Manolo at the bow prompted Gabe to back down the engine with such suddenness that Jeanne nearly lost her footing on the jerking deck. Shoving the
Angel
into reverse, Gabe backed the boat through the water, crabbing sideways with the current.
“What is it,
amigo
?” Gabe called out to the deckhand on the bow.
“The coral, it grows an arm.” Manolo jabbed his finger ahead.
“All right, folks, that wraps up this quadrant as far as the
Angel
can go,” Gabe announced. “If we chart anything else, we'll have to do it in the inflatable.”
“What do you think?” Jeanne asked Pablo. “Should we start diving where we found significant debris or finish mapping this quadrant in the raft?”
“I vote for diving,” Nick said. “I'm hunch-backed and blind from watching that needle.”
“
You
are,” Stuart challenged, rubbing his back. “I may never sit straight again.”
“It does sound good.” Jeanne wiped a film of perspiration from her brow with her arm and resisted the sweet temptation to cool off. “But we haven't finished mapping the grid until we scan this edge of the reef.” She turned to the rest of the crew gathering about.
“Group consult,” she announced. “Nick and Stuart want to dive the southwest quadrant. Who wants to go with the raft and finish our work?”
Don Pablo raised his hand, followed by Gabe.
Jeanne turned to Mara and Ann. “You two, what's your vote?”
Ann scrunched up her sun-pinkened face in thought. “I'm just a photographer . . . but if you guys take the boat, could you drop Mara and me off at the beach with the portable metal detectors? I mean, it beats just sitting around reading.”
“Yes, that would be fun,” Mara seconded.
“Do you think it will be safe on the island?” Jeanne asked Pablo and Gabe.
“If they load up on insect repellant, use common sense, and don't go inland, I see no problem,” Gabe replied.
“
SÃ
, it's primarily a bird sanctuary,” Pablo affirmed.
Ann jumped to her feet. Adapting a piratical swagger, she put both hands on her hips. “Well, hardee-har-har, mateys, let's get to it then.”
The ride to the beach was crowded until Ann, Mara, and Nick, who opted at the last minute to join the ladies on the beach with metal detectors, disembarked with their supplies. That left a sun-blocked Stuart to join Pablo, working the magnetometer's portable recording device, with Pablo straddling the middle seat, using the remainder as a charting table. Gabe piloted the craft and checked their location with a handheld GPS unit, while Jeanne handled the line dragging the magnetometer fish unit.
Periodically Jeanne observed the trio on the beach scanning for any washed up treasure. She looked at anythingâthe dog, the boat, the beach, and the fish lineâto keep from checking out Gabe. But it was impossible; she had to coordinate turns with him to keep her line clear of the propeller. And she felt the eyes hidden behind his sunglasses fixed on her.
“So what did you do before you became a treasure hunter?” she asked, summoning her nerve. “I know you went to college with Pablo . . .”
White teeth flashed a toothpaste-commercial grin. “We go back a long time.”
“And worked at BBSR.” At Jeanne's mention of the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, the grin vanished.
“I worked and studied there.”
End of story.
Gabe didn't say it, but his demeanor did.
She'd hoped that without Remy around to pounce, Gabe might have opened up a bit. “You seem to know a lot about the coral.” That was as lame a hint as she'd ever heard.
“Sounds to me like you're trying to dig up my sordid past.”
Embarrassed, she nodded. “I suppose I am . . . curious, that is. Especially since you seem determined to keep it hidden.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Gabe teased, pulling the rim of his shades down and peering over them with a look of mischief that tickled every one of Jeanne's senses.
Definitely time to change course. “And I'm wondering why you seem to have it in for Remy.” She braced, half-expecting him to blast her with
mind your own business
, toss her over the side, or both. But this
was
her business, at least where harmony among her crew was concerned.
Gabe winced. “The man is a very bitter pill . . . even if he is your friend.”
“As a favor to me, would you try not to provoke him?”
Gabe pressed his lips together, his forehead furrowed in a show of deep thought. He nodded. “It'll cost you though.”
A twitch at the corner of his lips made her wary. “What?”
“Dinner . . . Sunday . . . Akumal, you and I.”
Jeanne's heart thudded. “Like . . . a date?”
“Like . . .” Gabe mimicked the swing of her ponytail, flipping his short one with his fingers.
Jeanne laughed outright.
“What say we start as friends and see what the moon has in store.”
The moon! Smile freezing on her face, Jeanne groaned in silence. Her brothers had both found true love under the spell of the Mexican moon. Not that she was against finding the right person, but, sadly, gorgeous and charming did not mean right.
Gabe passed the looks and personality test with flying colors, but deeper issues left him short. Blaine and Mark had found matches for the heart and the spirit, the kind that last forever. And even if it broke her heart, Jeanne would settle for nothing less. But before she could put together an answer to Gabe's invitation, Stuart shouted from the bow.
“Bingo! We're maggin'!”
The
Fallen Angel
should have been nosing its way through the glittering silver-blue water toward Punta Azul as the sun dipped fast toward the western horizon, but the fever had claimed its crew. Ann, Mara, and Nick had struck it rich. Having found mostly silver and some gold coins along with a few belt buckles tossed in, Ann had stripped to her tank swimsuit and tied knots in her Bermuda shorts to make a bag to bring them back in.
“And I got some good video to boot,” she bragged, stepping into the rising and dipping boat with a cautious swagger.
The beach looked as if it had been shelled with artillery. There were holes and welts of sand everywhere.
“I think we must have been the first people on that island since Captain Ortiz,” Nick speculated, sifting his fingers through the sandy coins before handing them over like a cradled babe to Jeanne.
The banner results of their charting the reef forgotten, Jeanne took the half-filled “sack” of coins and put it on the floor of the half-beached raft between her and Gabe. While the trio babbled on and on about their adventure, she lifted a piece-of-eight between her fingers and brushed away the sandy residue, staring in sheer wonder at the date.
“Sixteen-seventy-eight . . . thank you, Jesus,” she murmured under her breath. “It
could
be.”
Gabe caught her eye as he picked up another piece of the treasure. “Sixteen-eighty-two. You're in the right vicinity.”
As they dove into the pile, digging like kids for candy, Nick gave a smug laugh, diverting their attention. “The latest date we found was 1700,” he told them.
Jeanne gasped in delight. The
Luna Azul
had sunk little more than a year later. Her already pumping blood surged, fit to burst her veins.
“It's my baby!” Shooting to her feet, hands raised to the heavens, she did a little dance. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Suddenly a swell lifted the rubbery deck beneath her. Before Jeanne, or anyone, could do anything, she flopped backward into the shallow water with a loud splash. As she came up for air, another swell smacked her in the face, but Jeanne was more concerned with the coin she'd lost. Spitting water out of her mouth and rolling on her knees, she began to dig furiously in the swirl of the surf, despite the indignity of the laughter from the crew.
“My coin! It's got to be here,” she cried, clawing the shifting sand into which her knees sank more with each subsequent wave.
Suddenly, a steely arm hooked her about the waist, lifting her above the surf, arms and legs flailing.
“First lesson in a raft,” Gabe chided, hauling her over the rim of the rubber boat. “Never stand up and jump for joy. As I recall, only Jesus can walk on water.” Laughing, he deposited her, dripping water everywhere, on the seat.
But Jeanne didn't care. She wanted her coin. “Give me that metal detector,” she told Ann.
At Ann's expectant glance, Gabe nodded. “Might as well. She'll not let us leave without it.”
By the time they boarded the
Fallen Angel
with the recovered coin and its mates, the horizon was streaked with the blue and orange remnants of the day. While Manolo and Gabe strapped the raft onto the roof of the galley section, Mara, Ann, Nick, and a drip-dried Jeanne separated the coins into plastic beach buckets according to date.
Although distracted by the presence of real gold, Stuart remained focused on printing out the readings from the portable magnetometer unit. “Holy moly,” he groaned, drawing the attention of the rest of the gold-dazzled crew.
“What?” Nick exclaimed.
“You'd better enjoy running your fingers through those coins,” Stuart warned, “because if our readings are any indication, the real cache is in the reef lagoon.”
Jeanne drifted back to earth from her heavenly daze. In the excitement, she'd almost forgotten the bad news.
Pablo looked up from where he'd packed the
fish
in its metal box. “It will be a problem, but not impossible.”
With a surge of hope, she nodded. “That's right,
amigos
. Just remember, with faith, all things are possible.”
But it was hard to miss the skeptical expression Gabe cast in Pablo's direction. “With faith and some engineering . . .
maybe
.”
Wearing an apron over his polo shirt and shorts, Remy Primston met the excited crew at the door of the ecolodge that night like an angry housewife. “Not only have I been frantic with worry, but the exquisite meal I have prepared is ruined, absolutely ruined.”
Gabe might have laughed if he wasn't so tired and vexed over the situation.
“Remy, we found gold,” Jeanne squealed.
“And you have no idea what I have been through to find fresh, fly-free meat in this armpit of a place.” He hesitated, bending closer. “Did you say
gold
?”
“Prim,” Gabe rumbled in a threatening voice. “It's been a long, eventful day. Can we discuss it over this
fly-free
meat?”
With a sniff that Gabe had yet to identify as being due to allergies, delusions of superiority, or both, Remy backed inside. “Well, if the treasure has waited over three hundred years, I suppose a few more minutes won't matter much.”
The table was set with silverware rolled in paper napkins on each plate instead of waiting in a pile, cafeteria-style, for the diners to pick up on their own. Place cards seated Remy at the head of the table, with Jeanne to his right and Pablo to his left. Gabe and Manolo, riffraff that they were in the professor's jaundiced eye, were relegated to the far end.
At Remy's clap of the hand, Lupita entered the room with a tray of platters containing shish kebabs of beef and vegetables with a side of pasta in a pink sauce. Her displeasure set stonelike on her face, she served from his end of the table toward Gabe and Manolo.
“Remy, what a delightful surprise,” Jeanne complimented him. “I didn't know you could cook.”
Oozing with delight, the professor chuckled. “There are many things you've yet to discover about me.”
“I'll drink to that,” Gabe said, drawing every eye at the table. “If I had a drink, that is.”
“He uses all my vinegar,” Lupita ground out, snatching up her tray. With a face that looked as though it had been pickled in fury, she marched toward the kitchen for the remainder of the platters.