Baja Florida (10 page)

They brought her food and asked her questions. They wanted to know about the money.

“When are the deposits made?”

“The tenth of each month.”

“Always the same amount?”

“Yes.”

“Does anyone have access to the account besides you?”

“No.”

They asked a few questions about her mother and the rest of her family. Was there anyone she checked in with on a regular basis? Anyone who would get worried if they didn't hear from her?

No, she told them. She had no brothers, no sisters. There was an aunt and an uncle and assorted cousins, most of them living in Raleigh, but she was seldom in touch with them, hadn't spoken to them since her mother's funeral, except to go over some matters about her estate. And her best friends, the people she cared most about, they'd all been with her on the boat.

Immediately, she regretted telling them the truth. She should have told them she was extremely close to Molly's family, that she was supposed to call them at least every other day, that they were probably beside themselves with worry now and had alerted the police. But she didn't think of it until it was too late. She wasn't accustomed to lying.

It was her father who interested them the most.

“I really don't know that much about him,” she said. “I haven't seen him in more than twenty years. I can't even remember what he looks like. We've just spoken on the phone. And only three times.”

“He owns a private island with a big house. Got his own plane. The guy must be loaded.”

“I really wouldn't know.”

“You know anything about the setup on that island? How many people he's got working for him there? Security, that kind of thing?”

“No idea.”

“How did he make all his money?”

“I've got no idea about that either.”

“Are you in his will?”

“I don't know.”

“You said he was dying.”

“He told me on the phone that he'd been sick. I assumed the worse.”

“He's gotta be getting ready to kick. Why else would he be getting in touch with you after all these years, huh? Because if he had really wanted to see you he could have done that long before now. Right?”

She didn't say anything. But she thought:
Yes, if my father had really wanted to see me he would have done it long ago.

She heard them talking low among themselves, but couldn't make out any of it.

She thought:
I should have been nicer to my father on the phone. I should have flown straight there to see him when he called. I shouldn't have been so noncommittal, leaving him hanging like that, wondering when I would show up. Or if I would show up. I should have at least shown a little enthusiasm. But Molly had barely ever spoken about him. I didn't even know his name until I was thirteen. And I had no desire to seek him out—Molly had squelched any notion of that. Still, he's my father. I should have…

She felt a hand on her leg. It was him, shaking her.

“Jen? Answer me, dammit, I'm asking you a question.”

“What? Sorry, I didn't hear you.”

“Who is this guy?”

“What guy?”

“This guy, Abel Delgado.”

It was just after 5:00 p.m. when the
Trifecta
dropped anchor at Green Turtle Cay, a hundred yards out from Government Dock. A few minutes later, several people piled into its dinghy and began heading our way.

I couldn't be sure that Karen Breakell was on the dinghy. She was the cook, the only female crew member according to the dockmaster at Blue Sky Marina. Maybe she'd stayed on the boat to get dinner ready. In which case I'd have to sweet-talk someone into taking us on the dinghy out to her. I had used up all my sweet talk on Abel Delgado. I was hoping to catch a break.

The dinghy tied off on the dock. Six people in it.

Four of them were quite obviously the party who had chartered the boat—two men, two women; the men in flowery shirts, the women in Lilly Pulitzer.

A young man in a semi-official captain's outfit—khaki shorts, white shirt tucked in, deck shoes—helped them onto the dock.

That left the young woman who was the last to step out of the dinghy. Same outfit as the young man. Blond, tall, lean, and well put together. Or long and leggity, in Cutiespeak.

She brought up the rear of the group. I approached her.

“Karen Breakell?”

She stopped.

“Yes, that's me.”

“I'd like to talk to you about Jen Ryser.”

Her brown eyes widened, a hand went to her mouth.

“Jen? Is she OK? Did something happen?”

“We just need to locate her, that's all.”

“What's wrong? Who are you?”

I introduced Boggy and myself. I told her that I was an old friend of Jen's father and that he had asked me to help track her down. The rest of her party stopped at the end of the dock, waiting for her. She told them to go on and she would catch up with them.

“We'll be at Sundowner's,” the young man said, pointing toward a bar that sat along the waterfront.

Karen Breakell wore the look of someone who had spent much of her young life around boats. Her hair was honeyed and sun-streaked. Her skin wasn't the shiny, surface bronze of a quickie vacation tan, but the deep and creamy brown that speaks of long hours spent not only in the sun but soaking up its reflection off the water, the way it burnishes the nether parts—behind the ears, beneath the brow, between the fingers—despite all diligence with sunscreen. I could just make out the first spidery lines around her eyes, the ones that come from squinting against the glare of a white-bright day. Hers was a pretty and open face, one that would wear a smile well. But she wasn't smiling as she studied me. The jury was still out about me and my motives.

She wore a good watch and she checked it.

“I need to get to the grocery store before it closes. Get some things for dinner,” she said. “We're only here for an hour and then we're heading back to Marsh Harbour.”

“Thought you weren't due back until tomorrow.”

“Change of plans. The clients decided they want to fly home first thing in the morning. So I'm going to pick up some steaks and cook them dinner while we cruise back to the marina.”

“This shouldn't take long,” I said.

“I really don't know what I can do to help you find Jen. It's been nearly a week since I last saw her. I thought she would have been at her father's place by now.”

“So she was definitely planning to go there?”

“Oh yeah, for sure. She was excited about it. Or maybe excited isn't the right word. Because she was nervous, too. I mean, it has been so long since Jen's seen him. What, twenty years or so?”

“Something like that,” I said. “You and Jen are close friends?”

“Real close. We shared a house for the past two years. On the sailing team together and everything. Jen's great. I just wish that…”

She shrugged, let it hang.

“What happened at Miner Cay, Karen?”

She shot me a look.

“So you heard about that?”

“We were there earlier today. You and your friends made quite an impression with the locals.”

She shook her head, blew out some air.

“We'd all been drinking a little too much.”

“So I heard.”

“I probably shouldn't have done what I did, but I'd had it with Torrey. I just couldn't take being on the boat with that woman for another second.”

“That's Torrey Kealing?”

“Yeah, her. That saying about oil and water? How they don't mix? That was us.”

“But didn't you know that before you got on the boat with her? I mean, you must have had a few weeks to plan the trip, gotten a chance to feel things out beforehand, know if there might be issues with other people.”

“Oh, we'd been planning the trip for more than a year. And everyone got along just fine. But Torrey wasn't part of the original group. She didn't come along until right at the end. After the whole thing with Coach Tony and Liz.”

“Coach Tony?”

“Yeah, Tony Telan. The coach of our sailing team. More than just a coach, really. A friend, too. I mean, he's just a couple of years older than us. He's in graduate school. And he's like this super-experienced sailor. Did a solo transatlantic when he was just seventeen. Been up and down the Ca rib be an. Knows everything there is to know about boats. He was supposed to come with us. He and Liz. That's his girlfriend. She sails, too. But a couple of weeks before we were supposed to leave, their house caught on fire. They lost almost everything. Even their dog. After that, they decided they better not come with us. So that left just me and Jen and Pete and Will. We were thinking about calling the whole thing off.”

I recalled the names I'd written down on my note pad in Walker's Cay.

“Pete Crumrine and Will Moody.”

“Uh-huh. Jen and I have known them since we were all freshmen. Nice guys. Pete is going to law school in the fall. At Georgia. And Will is staying in Charleston, going to medical school. Pete and I went out a couple of times when we were sophomores, but we decided we worked better as friends. Jen and Will, though, they had this kinda thing…”

“They were seeing each other?”

“Let's say they were hanging out a lot together, you know? Spending more time, just the two of them. I was hoping it would go somewhere. Jen deserves to find someone nice. She hasn't exactly had the best luck with men.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know, bad choices, I guess. She's one of those girls, I don't know exactly how to describe it, but she always had to be with a guy, you know what I mean? She couldn't just be Jen. We used to talk about it sometimes. Me, when I break up with a guy I sometimes go months before I'm with another guy. I don't mind it. Tell you the truth, I kind of enjoy it that way. Guys can sometimes be so…”

“So guyish,” I said.

She laughed.

“Totally,” she said. “But Jen, the moment she broke it off with one guy it was like she couldn't stop until she'd connected with someone else. I'm not saying she was like, you know, promiscuous. It wasn't anything like that. It was more like she needed to be with a guy in order to define herself. Lucky for Jen she never had any trouble finding guys. She's pretty. She's smart.”

“And she's rich.”

“Which can create its own problems,” Karen said. “Lots of the guys Jen attracts, they're users. It's not like Jen flaunts her money. I mean, she has nice things. Very nice things. Nice clothes, nice car.”

“Nice boat.”

“An unbelievable boat,” Karen said. “And the house we shared, she owned it. But she was never in your face about all the money, you know? Like, here's an example…

“Last year, the sailing team qualified for the nationals out in San Diego. It was going to cost something like eighty thousand dollars for everyone to go, what with getting the boats hauled out there, room and board and transportation for thirty-two people. The college said it could only pay half of that, the team would have to raise the rest. So we had car washes and bake sales and we begged our parents, all the usual stuff. Two weeks before nationals we were still fifteen thousand dollars short. We thought,
Well, that's that. We aren't going.
And then Coach Tony held a team meeting and announced that an anonymous benefactor had come forward and donated the rest of the money we needed.”

“It was Jen?”

“She denied it when I asked her about it,” Karen said. “But, yeah, it had to be her. I mean, who else? Either her or her mother.”

“How did Jen take it when her mother died?”

“Hard, real hard. Jen and her mom, they were more like sisters than mother and daughter, you know? Jen called her by her name, Molly, not Mom or something like that. They were just really, really close. I mean, I love my mother, but with the two of them it was something else. They must have spoken on the phone four or five times a day. Girl talk, everything. They didn't have any secrets. Buying the boat, the cruise, the whole thing was their idea. The two of them came up with it originally and then put together the rest of the crew. Molly was supposed to come with us. But…” She stopped, shrugged. “I think that's why Jen jumped at the chance to visit her father. She's had this big hole in her heart since Molly died and she was hoping maybe he could fill it.”

Karen Breakell looked at her watch again.

“Look, I really need to get to the store,” she said.

“We'll walk with you,” I said.

Sid's Grocery was just up the street. We headed for it. I walked alongside Karen Breakell. Boggy trailed behind us.

“You said you almost called off the trip?”

Karen nodded.

“Yeah, this was right after Coach Tony had to drop out. Will and Pete aren't experienced sailors. And neither Jen nor I had enough open-water experience to feel comfortable about making the crossing. We needed a seasoned captain to go with us. And it's hard to find someone on such short notice. So we were left high and dry, right before we were scheduled to leave. Jen was really torn up about that. The sailboat trip was kinda like this tribute to her mom, something the two of them had planned on doing together and she wanted to see it through. Jen's a good sailor, but…”

“A Beneteau 54 is a lot of boat.”

“Exactly. She didn't want to risk it just on her skills alone,” Karen said. “We were all bummed about having to pull the plug on the trip. We wanted to travel in April and May, before hurricane season started. So if we were going to do it, then it meant we had to leave right away.”

“So what changed Jen's mind about canceling the trip?”

“Justin Hatchitt came along.”

“The captain?”

“Uh-huh. It was just total coincidence that we found him. Or he found us. What ever, it was a lucky break,” Karen said. “All because we decided to go have a few beers at the Blind Tiger. It's this bar in downtown Charleston.”

“So, let me get this straight. You meet a guy in a bar and you hire him to be your captain?”

Karen laughed.

“I know, it sounds pretty sketch. But if you met Justin you'd understand. He just looks like a captain. Rugged, outdoorsy. He's got this air of confidence, like he can handle anything that comes along.”

“And he had experience sailing in the islands?”

“Yeah, lots of it. He said he'd spent the winter on a big sailboat down in St. Bart's and had just finished transporting it to Hilton Head for the summer season. Not that Jen checked any of it out,” Karen said. “She didn't need a lot of convincing.”

“What do you mean?”

Karen smiled.

“I mean, you could practically see the sparks flying between her and Justin.”

“So she hired him to be the captain?”

“That's the best part,” Karen said. “Justin said he'd do it for free. He said he'd been working nonstop for almost a year, had some money saved, and he said this would be his vacation. He loved the boat once he laid eyes on it. I mean, it's brand-new, what's not to love? And, I don't know, we all just seemed to hit it off with him. It felt right. A good fit.”

We reached the entrance of Sid's Grocery. The hours were posted in the window. Still another forty-five minutes until it closed.

“So what went wrong, Karen?”

“Excuse me?”

“What made you get off the boat on Miner Cay?”

She shook her head. It took her a moment to answer.

“Like I said, Torrey and I just did not hit it off. At first, she seemed like a good fit, too. But it didn't take too long for that to wear off.”

“You said she was the last one to join the trip?”

“Yeah, she and Pete, they'd hooked up. He hadn't known Torrey very long, just a couple of weeks. Met her at the Blind Tiger the same night we met Justin. Then things got all fast and furious between them. Pete was, like, head over heels for her. He asked if she could come along.”

“And everyone agreed?”

“Well, with Coach Tony and Liz dropping out, we had room on the boat. Torrey seemed nice enough. She said she had sailing experience. She seemed OK. She was very enthusiastic. She's got this big personality, very vivacious and talkative. Plus, she had the money.”

“The money?”

“Yeah. Pete and Will and me, we didn't want Jen to get stuck with all the expense, you know? After all, here she was letting us join her on this great boat of hers and we wanted to pay our way. We decided we would each throw in two thousand dollars at the beginning of the trip and use that to pay our share of the food, gas, docking expenses, what ever. Torrey threw in her two thousand and that was that.”

“So when did you decide that the boat wasn't big enough for the both of you?”

“Didn't take long. We hit bad weather right out of Charleston and had to tuck in around Savannah, behind Tybee Island, until it settled. Three days of rain and heavy wind and all of us cooped up. You know how it is on a boat. Everyone needs to pitch in. I did the cooking because, you know, that's just my thing. All the others saw what needed doing and they did it. Except Torrey. She was mostly good at bossing other people around. It started wearing thin real quick.”

“What about Jen or Justin Hatchitt? Shouldn't they have set her straight?”

“You would think,” Karen said. “But by then Jen and Justin were pretty much oblivious to anything but each other.”

“I thought Jen and Will…”

“Yeah, Will thought he and Jen had something going on, too. Like I said, it wasn't anything official. Still, it made it awkward with Jen and Justin carrying on with each other right in front of Will like that. With the weather, there wasn't anything we could do but hang out down below on the boat. Jen and Justin would go off to her cabin. Pete and Torrey would go off, too. Will and I would just kinda sit there twiddling our thumbs. It was weird. I felt sorry for Will. I could tell he was hurt. But he just shrugged it off.”

“So what caused things to blow up between you and Torrey?”

“It was right after we left Savannah,” Karen said. “About thirty miles offshore we hit some more weather, a squall line, and things happened real fast. We had to scramble—reef the mainsail, fasten things down, close the hatches. Everyone was busy doing something. Except Torrey, as usual.

“The roller furler on the jib snagged or something and the jib was flapping around on the foredeck. I yelled at Torrey to get off her dead ass and come help me with it. But she just sat there. Jen was down below and heard me hollering. So she hurried up to give me a hand, but she slipped as she was coming out of the cockpit and she must have hit a turnbuckle or something because it ripped her blouse and there was blood all over the place. And there was this big gash on the back of her shoulder.

“Lucky for us, Will was on board. I mean, he's not a doctor yet or anything, but he knows how to do things. He got the wound cleaned up. Not as bad as it looked but it needed some stitches, like eight or ten of them. We had to make a decision: Turn back to Savannah and take Jen to the emergency room. Or keep going and take care of it ourselves. Will and Pete and me, we were all for turning back. I mean, it was a nasty cut. But Justin and Torrey, they said we'd be in more danger if we sailed back through the storm and it was better to press on to the Bahamas. It was Jen's call and she said keep going. So Will got out the first-aid kit and he had Jen drink a lot of vodka and he stitched it up. It was ugly looking but at least he took care of it.”

“And you blamed it all on Torrey?”

“Yeah, I did. But it was really just a whole lot of stuff that had been building up. And it exploded when we hit Miner Cay a couple of days later. Like I said, we all started drinking too early in the day and by the time we went ashore we were at each other's throats.”

“You and Jen, too?”

Karen looked away, her face pained.

“Yeah, I said some things. Jen said some things. Mostly I was giving her a hard time for hooking up with Justin and rubbing it in Will's face. Will didn't deserve that. Then Torrey jumped into it and told me to mind my own business and that really set me off. Next I knew, we were all going at it.”

“And the next morning, you got off the boat in Miner Cay and told them good-bye.”

“Yeah, Jen didn't want me to go. She begged me not to. But I had my back up and the whole thing on the boat was just getting a little too weird for me. Not what I signed up for,” Karen said. “I felt bad for Will because, with me gone, he was really going to be the fifth wheel. I tried to talk him into coming with me, but he didn't like the idea of hanging out on Miner Cay for who knows how long waiting for the mailboat to arrive. He wanted to go straight to Marsh Harbour and figure it out from there.”

“So that's where they were heading? Marsh Harbour?”

“That was the first stop, yeah. And then the plan was to just work our way down the islands until we got to Jen's dad's place. After that, we were going to play it by ear, see what happened.”

“So you think they might still be up here in the Abacos?”

“Could be. They wanted to hit as many islands up this way as possible—Man O' War Cay, Elbow Cay, make the circuit. Then hit Harbour Island and Eleuthera on the way south. I keep an eye out, thinking I'll spot them, but…”

A woman was coming out of Sid's Grocery. Karen grabbed the door and held it open, ready to step inside.

I gave her my card.

“Well, if you cross paths with them, give me a shout.”

“Will do,” Karen said. “And if you find Jen first, will you tell her something for me?”

“Sure,” I said. “What is it?”

“Tell her I love her. Tell her I'm sorry. Tell her I'm still her friend.”