Afoot on St. Croix (Mystery in the Islands) (9 page)

An Impulsive Offspring

THE HOUSEMAID WHO
had been commandeered for babysitting duty sat at a desk in the Comanche’s second-floor office suite, reading a gossip magazine from the States that a guest had left in her room when she checked out a few days earlier.

The maid’s two charges were sprawled on the floor a few feet away. Hassan worked to assemble a set of LEGOs into a small dump truck, while Elena accessorized a collection of Barbie dolls, switching dresses, purses, hats, and shoes from one plastic figure to the next.

The hotel manager stopped in the hallway outside the office and leaned in through the open doorway. His face bore the harried expression of a man who had already juggled one too many crises that day.

“The people in number eight are asking for a fresh set of towels. Can you run them down there for me?”

“Of course,” the woman replied, guiltily blushing as she dropped the magazine on the desk. She reached into a drawer for a set of keys.

Standing from her chair, she turned to look at the children. Both appeared to be thoroughly engrossed in their play.

“You two stay right here,” the maid said softly as she tiptoed to the door. “I’ll be right back.”

•

THE SECOND THE
maid left her post, Elena looked up from her dolls. Raising herself onto her knees, she watched as the woman hurried down the hallway toward the linen closet. The girl’s green eyes slanted mischievously.

“Come on, Hassan,” she whispered, jumping up from the floor.

“But I’m not done,” he replied, holding out his half-finished dump truck.

“You can play with it later,” she hissed, grabbing his arm.

“But . . .” Hassan’s brown eyes widened as he remembered his mother’s parting words. They were under strict orders to stay in this office until she finished with her meeting and came back to get them.

“Hurry,” Elena said, urgently yanking on his elbow.

Hassan didn’t like to get into trouble. By nature, he was an obedient child. And with a hungry Goat Foot Woman out there looking for children to eat, it seemed like a particularly bad time to be wandering off without adult supervision.

“But what about the Goat Foot Wo . . .” Hassan protested, to no avail.

The truck fell to the ground as Elena tugged him out the door.

Counting Chickens

AROUND THE CORNER
from the Comanche Hotel, the taxi drivers gathered in their regular afternoon spot, a shaded alley across from the green space surrounding the Danish fort. The drivers’ marked vans were stationed nearby, parked along a straight portion of King Street, Christiansted’s main vehicular roadway.

From the comfort of their foldout chairs, the drivers had views of the east end of the harbor as well as Government House, the St. Croix annex to the administration facilities on St. Thomas.

The alley’s strategic position allowed the drivers to monitor all of the area’s important comings and goings. News of any significance was generally brought to the taxi stand alley for rapid conveyance.

From this collection point, information was then relayed around the island via text message or cell-phone call, quickly spreading through a network of family and friends. Often, the reporting carried in St. Croix’s printed newspapers was merely a confirmation of the taxi driver rumors that had circulated the day before.

•

IT HAD BEEN
a slow day—on both the passenger and news fronts—leaving the men plenty of time for gossip and debate.

That afternoon’s heated topic involved the cruise ship that was scheduled to arrive the following morning and whether it would be worth the drivers’ while to cross to the other side of the island to try to pick up fares.

St. Croix saw a fair number of cruise ship layovers, but the coral reef that surrounded much of the island, including the Christiansted harbor, precluded the most advantageous landing points. There were only two places where the mammoth ships could dock: a deepwater port next to the south shore refinery, and a recently renovated pier at the small west-end town of Frederiksted. Given the refinery’s industrial vista of barbed-wire fencing and smoke-spewing metal pipes, the Frederisksted pier was the easy winner.

The downside to Frederisksted was its remote location. Christiansted’s boutique shops and boardwalk entertainment were a thirty- to forty-minute taxi ride away. Given the numerous amenities available onboard a ship, many potential day-trippers opted to spend their port day on the boat or simply snorkeling off the Frederiksted pier.

As a result, while each arriving cruise ship was met with a great deal of anticipation by St. Croix’s tourist-catering community, the occurrences rarely resulted in much tourist traffic or additional revenue.

The taxi drivers were evenly split on the next day’s plans.

A tall Crucian man crossed his arms over his thin chest and sighed belligerently.

“Last time, I waited all day over there, and I didn’t get a single fare. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow afternoon. I’m stayin’ put right here.”

The driver seated to his right, a man from the island of Nevis, blew out a triumphant snort.

“Hey, Emmitt. That’s fine with me. I’ll take them all in my van. You can sit around in this alley and count chickens.”

•

SECOND ONLY TO
the pros and cons of the cruise ship schedule, the most frequent discussion point at the taxi stand related to the daily assessment of Christiansted’s feral chicken population.

The building that housed the national park’s public restrooms lay across the street, on the south side of the King Street curve, kitty-corner to the drivers’ alley. Leaky pipes attached to the outside of the building provided a water source for a number of free-roaming chickens, many of whom built their nests in the row of bushes lining the structure’s concrete exterior.

For several hours each morning, the hens paraded their hatchlings back and forth across King Street’s busy thoroughfare, a lesson in survival skills as well as an unfortunate but necessary process of winnowing down the flock. The average batch of hatchlings resulted in more chicks than one hen could possibly hope to keep track of or feed.

For the taxi drivers, whiling away long hot days with an ever-diminishing pool of riders, the road-crossing exercise had become a gruesome game of chance. They had organized an informal gambling ring, betting on the number of chicks that would survive the day’s carnage.

Since joining the group, the driver from Nevis had crushed his fellow chicken-counting competitors, racking up a sizeable stash of prize money. He wasn’t about to let the others forget his successful run—particularly Emmitt, who had ended up on the bottom end of the wager pool for the past five days.

“Hey, Emmitt. What’d you do to them chickens to make them hate you so?”

He pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket, the last week’s winnings, and waved it in front of the Crucian’s nose.

“All right, Nevis. You just wait,” Emmitt said, waving him off. “Your luck’s bound to run out soon.”

•

GRUMBLING BITTERLY, EMMITT
shifted his weight in his chair and turned a cold shoulder toward the driver from Nevis. He’d had more than enough of the fellow’s bragging. He certainly hoped the man opted to make the Frederiksted run the next day. His absence would dramatically even the odds in the chicken competition.

A movement on the fort’s wide lawn caught Emmitt’s attention. Leaning forward in his chair, he craned his neck around the corner of the alley to get a better look. He watched as a man in a cutoff T-shirt, running shorts, and sneakers jogged away from the gazebo.

Emmitt heaved out a relieved sigh as he noted the stack of sheet music the man carried in his arms.

“Thank the Lord, ’Berto’s finished with that blasted singing. It’s bad enough I have to listen to you lot all day. That opera nonsense gives me a headache.”

Nevis stretched and yawned, seemingly oblivious to Emmitt’s turned back.

“Oh, I don’t know, Emmitt. Today wasn’t too terrible.” He straightened the collar of his stained shirt and leaned toward Emmitt’s chair. “’Course, Bach is more to my taste.”

The Crucian rotated in his chair, returning his gaze to the alley. He stared at the Nevisian driver for a long moment, his stony face expressionless.

Then he swatted the air, as if shooing a fly.

“Oh, git on wit’ you.”

A Pleasing Existence

AFTER A VIGOROUS
two-hour vocal performance, Umberto reached the last stanza of the afternoon’s practice session. He cleared his lungs, letting the final note hang in the salty sea air. Then, with a nodding bow to the taxi drivers across the green space, he scooped up his cutoff T-shirt and slid it over his head, once more hiding the tattoos spread across his chest and shoulders. Neatly restacking the sheet music, he carried the pile down the gazebo’s wooden steps and jogged off toward the boardwalk.

A few sleepy hens cooed in the narrow shade of grass by the gazebo, groggily lifting their feathered heads. The chicks that had survived the morning traffic lesson cuddled beneath their mothers’ plump bodies, safe for at least one more day.

•

SETTING OFF DOWN
the boardwalk, Umberto waved to an approaching dinghy filled with passengers coming ashore from the cay. The skipper saluted back as he hopped out and secured the vessel to the boardwalk’s harbor edge. He then began unloading his guests, firmly gripping each one as they transferred from the bobbing boat to the wooden walkway.

The skipper’s night shift was just beginning. It was a job that would grow increasingly difficult as the night wore on. His human cargo was far easier to wrangle at the beginning of the evening than on the return trip at the shift’s end.

Several hours’ worth of Confusion cocktails tended to make for unsteady footing.

•

UMBERTO CONTINUED DOWN
the walkway, popping in at a sandwich shop for a liter-sized bottle of water and a collection of local newspapers. Loaded up with his purchases, he trotted through a security gate and onto the pier, where his small boat was docked.

As Umberto stepped up to the rigging, two miniature dachshunds bounded out of the ship’s galley, eager to greet him. Their tails wagging, they raced wild circles around his feet, nearly knocking him off balance. The vessel had been moored in the Christiansted harbor for several months now, and the dogs were well accustomed to their master’s daily routine.

“Senesino, Farinelli—
hup
,
hup
,” the opera singer called out, a firmly issued command that was utterly ignored. If anything, the dogs were more rambunctious, not less.

Sighing, he bent to untie his running shoes. After kicking them off on the deck, he relented and playfully rubbed the dogs’ silky heads. Unscrewing the lid from the bottled water, he topped off the liquid in the aluminum bowl of their feeding station.

Humming to himself, Umberto stepped into the boat’s kitchen area and removed a kettle from one of the cabinets built into the sidewall. He emptied the rest of the bottled water into the pot and lit the fuse on the stove’s mini-burner.

No matter the day’s humid heat. It was time for his afternoon tea.

•

THE DOGS LAPPED
at their bowls while Umberto opened a sealed canister and scooped out a serving of dried tea leaves. Using a cutting board built into the counter, he sliced a small lime into wedges—an acceptable substitute for lemon, at least when one lived on a boat.

Across from the kitchen, the boat’s center living area featured a foldout table anchored to a long bench, which doubled as a narrow bed. Between the cabinetry and the rows of circular windows that lined the cabin’s upper sides, there was little unoccupied wall space, but Umberto had managed to find a spot to hang a few plastic frames.

The plaques featured faded clippings commemorating some of the more acclaimed performances of his singing career. The figure standing on stage at the Boston Opera House in a full-length tuxedo, gloves, and top hat was almost unrecognizable as the sweaty singer from the gazebo.

Off to the boat’s starboard side, a slim doorway led to a tiny cubicle-shaped bathroom. After the sun went down, Umberto would use the handheld shower nozzle to take a quick, refreshing rinse. He glanced at the shower door and shrugged. In this humidity, it was pointless to try to clean up until the island had settled into its evening cool.

•

A BLAST OF
steam pulsed through the slatted hole in the kettle’s lid, peeping out a perfectly tuned high C note. Umberto slipped an oven mitt over one hand and removed the kettle from the stove, immediately pouring the boiling water into a carafe designed for steeping. He set the carafe, his cup, and a saucer full of lime wedges on a tray and carried the tea service onto the boat’s back deck.

The dogs were already settled on the floor beside Umberto’s frayed lawn chair. Positioned beneath an awning that stretched out from the cabin’s eaves, the spot had plenty of shade.

A three-legged stool had been anchored to the deck, within arm’s reach of the chair. Gripping the edges of the tray to keep it level, Umberto set the tea service on the stool and then eased into the comfort of the lawn chair’s loose-hanging seat. With a sigh, he stretched his arms out over his head and waited for the tea leaves to brew.

When the liquid had reached a suitable darkness, Umberto poured a few ounces into his cup, drizzled in some lime juice, and took a small sip.

“Ah,” he said with contentment.
“Perfetto.”

After thumbing through the stack of local newspapers he’d picked up on his way home from the gazebo, Umberto selected the one with the most colorful headline and unfolded it on his lap. Taking a full drink of the tea, he crossed one tanned leg over the other, and wiggled his toes.

What a civilized life, he thought as he gazed out at the water’s shimmering afternoon shadows.

He couldn’t have dreamed up a more pleasing existence.

•

UMBERTO SETTLED INTO
the newspaper, yawning as he skimmed through the first couple of articles.

The Italian opera star was well known to almost everyone in and around the Christiansted boardwalk—but as an eccentric, not a confidant. He occasionally exchanged pleasantries with the sugar mill bartender and the crazy old hag with the rusted-out shopping cart. Otherwise, he spent most of his days in peaceful solitude, insulated from the island’s rabid gossip chain.

Even if Umberto had been connected to the local social scene, its news source wouldn’t have reached him; he steadfastly refused to carry a cell phone during the months he spent in the Caribbean.

So as he scanned the newspaper’s front page, he was one of the few readers receiving its information for the first time.

Umberto briefly perused the daily weather update, noting that a storm would be passing through the following afternoon, before moving on to an enthusiastic description of the pending cruise ship’s arrival. He continued skimming through the crime blog, the sports listings, and the beach report.

Finally, he turned to the paper’s main coverage: the upcoming Transfer Day ceremonies.

•

MARCH 31 MARKED
the ninety-plus-year anniversary of the 1917 sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States—Transfer Day, as it was colloquially known.

The USVI calendar was filled with several notable holidays: the Carnival Festival in the spring, Emancipation Day in the summer, and, in the fall, Liberty Day, celebrating the life of labor leader D. Hamilton Jackson. Transfer Day’s end of March marker fell awkwardly in the mix. Among many of its residents, the territory’s purchase by the United States was a milestone of dubious distinction.

Nevertheless, tomorrow’s date would be commemorated by several public activities, with the main event scheduled to take place at a refurbished Danish plantation in the dense rain forest that covered the island’s northwest corner, not far from the cruise ship dock in Frederiksted.

The paper proudly announced that the territory’s governor would be flying in from St. Thomas to oversee the plantation festivities. Several Danish dignitaries along with a couple hundred Danish nationals, many of the latter group with family ties to St. Croix, had already arrived.

The article made no mention of the Americans, Umberto reflected as he refilled his cup and squeezed another slice of lime into the tea. Representatives of the island’s current owner would be conspicuously absent on the day celebrating its acquisition.

•

UMBERTO TUCKED THE
paper beneath the stool. Contemplating the cultural oddities of his adopted home, he cupped his hands beneath his head and leaned back in the chair.

St. Croix was a lonely, isolated place, surrounded by a flat horizon that was barely dimpled by the glitzier islands to the north. Far more dominant on the landscape was the glowering power plant that scarred the harbor’s west end, a sooty reminder of the belching refinery that swallowed several acres of the island’s south shore. This working class outpost, unknown by most of the continental United States and generally ignored by its sister Virgins, had a depth of character that only an artist could appreciate.

Umberto was a keen observer of the fascinating individuals who populated downtown Christiansted. While he was careful to maintain his oddball, outsider status—he preferred quiet solitude to the idle chitchat brought on by neighborly familiarity—he spent far more time watching the Islanders than the other way around.

His favorite pastime involved imagining the colorful life stories of the people he spied on from his boat’s rear deck.

There were the American refinery workers, brought in to consult on the local plant, men who were separated from their families in the States for months at a time. To Umberto’s eye, the blustering brutes with tattooed muscles and gruff Popeye demeanors were closet softies, secretly nursing the pangs of homesickness. Despite the long evenings they spent in the local bars, their constant cell-phone usage suggested they were in regular contact with their families and loved ones.

Next up were the weatherworn sailors, bowed at the knees, their balance permanently skewed to a boat’s bobbing buoyancy. These men had made a far more permanent break with society.

Umberto liked to picture what the old salts had looked like in their youth. He saw them as clean-shaven men with straight postures and unwrinkled faces, trading in their wives and girlfriends for the mistress of the sea.

Perhaps the best shoreline characters were the Crucian women, whose beautiful skin varied in every shade from cream to dark brown. The younger ones were easy to pick out, strutting along the boardwalk, bursting with pent-up adolescent rebellion, desperate to escape the island’s claustrophobic confines. They were almost matched in numbers by the returners, a few years older, still beautiful but now bearing a certain dignified reserve, having ventured to the bright lights of Miami only to find themselves put off by its wild flamboyance.

Umberto tilted the cup to drain the last sip of tea. Lightly smacking his lips, he turned his head toward downtown Christiansted, eager to see what the evening’s voyeurism might bring.

His vision drifted along the walkway to the crowd gathered outside the brewpub, where the afternoon’s crab races were about to begin.

Sitting up in his chair, Umberto watched as a girl of about seven with bouncing pigtails tugged a younger boy, his demeanor clearly reluctant, toward the edge of the spectators.