Killers of a Certain Age(24)
CHAPTER TEN
Helen kept the launch pointed east-northeast for the better part of the night, supervising as the rest of us took turns with the tiller. We held the speed low to save fuel, letting the wind carry us along, gigging the engine only to correct the course. Sometime after we set out, a boom shook the world and a pillar of fire reached up into the night sky. A cloud of oily smoke obscured the moon.
“Well, that’s that,” Helen said with a sigh. She turned her face to the blankness of the western horizon. Everything, sea and sky, was black and vaguely spangled with stars. We settled into the boat, wrapping up against the breeze that had sprung up.
It wasn’t a pleasant night, but we had all had worse. By late the next morning, Helen was steering us into a small cove on Nevis. We grabbed our gear, scuppered the launch so it couldn’t be traced to the Amphitrite, and headed along the paved road at the top of a little rise, skirting the houses and hotels. After half an hour of walking, I led the way down onto the beach.
“Where are we going?” Nat demanded, struggling. My espadrilles were flat, but she was wearing her wedges, hard going in the loose-packed sand.
“There,” I said, pointing to a sign which spelled out sunshine in rope lights that were unlit in the daytime. It was a beach bar, one of the most legendary in the Caribbean. “We’re going to order lunch and a round of Killer Bees. Anyone asks, we’re on vacation and we’re staying on St. Kitts,” I told them.
Whether it was the promise of roasted fish or the bar’s legendary rum punch, they didn’t fuss. We ate and drank until our plates were empty and the last drop of rum punch was gone, paying cash with a tip that was generous enough to be appreciated but not so generous as to be memorable. When we finished, the bartender dialed us up a cab, which dropped us at the water taxi landing. It was directly across The Narrows from the bottom end of St. Kitts, where the Park Hyatt lay gleaming under the sun. The landscaping was lush and the whole resort was tucked between the edge of the sea and the hills rising directly behind it.
The water taxi took six minutes to cross The Narrows, carrying vacationers and commuters. The captain chatted with his regulars, and Mary Alice made a point of flipping through a tourist magazine she had grabbed from a rack at Sunshine’s. The water taxi dropped us directly at the Hyatt’s dock.
I nodded towards a line of sun loungers on the beach, facing Nevis. “Go and sit comfortably for a minute. I’m going to get a room.”
“How do you expect to do that without a passport?” Helen demanded.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the neoprene e-reader case I’d been carrying since I went off the stern of the Amphitrite. A quick flick of my knife along the seam, and it was open. Sealed inside was a Canadian passport with my face but a different name.
“I’ll be damned,” Nat said slowly. “Do you always travel with extra papers?”
“Ever since Argentina,” I said with a grimace. The Argentina job was one of the most dangerous I’d ever done, and an extra set of papers would have saved me a rough interrogation and two months’ incarceration in a prison camp on the pampas.
“And how is our Canadian friend planning to pay for her room?” Helen asked.
I dipped back into the case to retrieve a Black Amex. “She has a credit card.”
Just then a staff member wearing a striped T-shirt and a broad smile came over with tall glasses of iced water decorated with slices of cucumber. She served Nat and Mary Alice while Helen and I made our way up the hill to the main lodge. In other circumstances, I might have been impressed. It was open-air with koi ponds and a spectacular view across The Narrows to Nevis. The atmosphere was serene, and I wanted to relax, but it was too soon.
The front desk was like something out of Architectural Digest—a long slab of polished black concrete with rattan barstools and a lofty arrangement of orchids. Only a slim tablet computer indicated any business was done there. The clerk greeted us graciously. I gave her a thin smile in return. It was important to pitch the tone just right, somewhere between irritation and entitlement.
I eyed her name tag. “Sophia, I hope you can help us. We’re booked into a luxury villa on the other side of the island, and I’m afraid it will not do,” I said, pinching my mouth to suggest something unspeakable. “Do you have a room available?”
“I’m so sorry to hear that! Let me see what I can do.” She tapped rapidly at her tablet. “I do have a lovely beachside double queen, but I’m afraid it’s on the far side of the resort, away from the restaurants and pools,” she said, gesturing towards the opposite side of the curving bay.
I sighed a little. “I’m sure that’s fine,” I said in a tone of mild disappointment.
“It’s ready right now,” she assured me. “And as I said, it’s beachside, so it is on the ground floor with direct beach access.”
“That will do,” Helen put in, her English very faintly accented with something that might have been Dutch or Danish or anywhere in between.
Sophia smiled gratefully at us. “I’m so glad. I will just need a credit card and your passports.”
Helen made a pantomime gesture towards her nonexistent wallet, and I placed my card and passport decisively in the little tray on the table. “No, no. I’ll handle it.”