Without a Grave (6 page)

Alice tried to swallow, choked, tears came to her eyes, whether from choking on the pie or on the insult, it was hard to tell, but I could guess. I was about to say something when there was a voice behind me, velvet, but firm. ‘Jaime. I see you're monopolizing Mrs Ives.'

Rudy Mueller. My knight in shining armor, or rather Alice's.

‘Not at all,' I lied. ‘Besides, Alice and I were about to go check out some jewelry, weren't we, Alice?'

Alice's eyes darted from the uneaten desserts on her plate to me and back again. In my opinion, the skinny waif was in need of some emergency ravioli, so I said, ‘Bring your plate with you, Alice.' I grasped her elbow and drew her away from the men.

‘Thank you,' she whispered when we were out of earshot of her in-laws. ‘I hate it when I get caught in between.'

I pointed to one of the pielets on her plate. ‘Eat.'

Alice obliged. While she chewed, I said, ‘Alice is a pretty name. I once had a great-aunt named Aliceanna. If I had more than the one daughter, I would have named her Alice.'

‘My full name's Alice Madonna Robinson.' The girl's cheeks reddened. ‘Mueller, now, I mean.'

‘How old are you, Alice?'

‘Seventeen.'

Alice looked fourteen, fifteen, max. I wondered if she was telling me the truth and if children were allowed to marry children in whatever South American country she and Jaime Mueller had been in when they decided to tie the knot.

‘How long have you been married?'

‘A couple of months. I met Jaime on a high-school graduation trip to Bonaire. After we fell in love . . .' She shrugged. ‘I just never went home.'

‘Where's home, Alice?'

‘Chicago.'

‘Your parents?'

‘Oh, they're still there.'

‘Have they . . .' I began.

Alice shrugged. ‘They don't really care. To tell you the truth, Mrs Ives, I wasn't a very good daughter. Always getting into trouble. I think they were happy to get me out of the house.'

‘I doubt that,' I told the girl, remembering how devastated we had been when Emily ran off after graduation from Bryn Mawr with the college dropout she later married. But at least Emily had graduated! The little-girl-lost standing next to me, her thin, fly-away hair floating palely above her bare shoulders, and the kind of porcelain skin that pinked up, rather than tanned, had barely made it out of high school.

‘Are you happy, Alice?'

She smiled sadly. ‘Mostly.' She seemed to consider her words carefully. ‘Jaime's all right, Mrs Ives. It's just when he's been drinking . . .'

Boy oh boy oh boy. A recipe for disaster, I knew. My father was an alcoholic – is, I should say, but in recovery – but dad had been the sad sack, cry in your beer kind of drunk. Not Jaime, though. From what I'd just witnessed, booze turned Jaime into a loud-mouthed jerk. Apparently Jaime's father thought so, too, because he'd maneuvered his son into a corner by the bottled-water table, and if I read the body language correctly, Master Jaime was getting a good chewing out along with his bottle of Deer.

‘Come with me,' I said to Alice. ‘I'm thinking of buying a necklace and I could use your advice.'

I led the girl to a stall manned by a local woman who sold jewelry crafted out of natural materials – sea glass, coconut, tagua and other exotic seeds. I picked up a necklace made of graduated rings of polished coconut strung on twine and held it up under my chin.

Laughing, Alice shook her head no.

I picked up a smaller version, this one featuring bright-orange tagua slices and dyed bombona seeds. She cocked her head, studying the effect. ‘That's better,' she said, ‘but still no.'

While I was fingering another necklace, Alice spotted a pair of earrings made out of bits of colored sea glass – white, Milk of Magnesia blue, and Coke-bottle green – strung on delicate, sterling-silver rods. She held them up to her ears, checking out her reflection in a mirror that the designer was holding up for her. ‘They're so beautiful!'

I had to agree. ‘Go ahead. Get them.'

Alice hooked the earrings back on to the display rack. She shook her head, cheeks flushing. ‘I'll have to ask Jaime. I forgot my purse.'

I didn't believe that for a minute. Unless I was way off base, Jaime kept his wife on a short leash. If she owned a single credit card, or had more than ten dollars to spend at one time, I'd have been greatly surprised. But I didn't want to embarrass her by saying so.

‘How much?' I asked the shopkeeper.

‘Twelve dollar fifty cent.'

I dug into my purse for twenty dollars Bahamian and handed the bill over. While the shopkeeper was sorting through her cash box looking for change, I lifted the card of earrings off the rack and held it out to Alice. ‘Here. These are for you.'

Alice pressed a hand to her chest and stepped back, flinching, like a startled deer. ‘Oh, Mrs Ives, I
couldn't
!'

‘Yes you can. I insist.'

Alice stared at me, lips pressed together, as she came to a decision. Her hand shot out to claim the earrings, and she grinned like a six-year-old on her birthday. ‘I'll pay you back some time, I promise.'

I watched as she unhooked the hoops she was wearing and replaced them with the pair of earrings I'd just bought her. She turned to face me and tilted her head from side to side. ‘How do I look?'

‘Beautiful,' I said. ‘The blue glass perfectly matches your eyes.'

How was I to know that the next time I saw Alice Madonna Mueller, her eyes would be anything but blue?

We caught the last ferry home. Just. We'd lost complete track of time at the art show, overstaying so long that we had to hustle, blowing five dollars on a cab that dropped us at Crossing Beach with no seconds to spare. Paul pounded down the dock shouting, ‘Wait! Wait!' after the departing ferry, but fortunately the driver had seen us coming, turned his side thrusters on, and eased the boat back to the dock.

We jumped aboard, and called out our thanks, barely getting into our seats before the ferry took off again, with us on it this time.

Close call. A night at a Marsh Harbour hotel, even the modest Lofty Fig, could set you back a couple of hundred bucks.

For that time of day, the Man-O-War ferry was surprisingly full. From the bags everyone carried, I deduced that half the population had been to Price Right for groceries and the other half had attended the art show, like we had.

The ferry had just nosed into Sugar Loaf channel when Paul said, ‘There's somebody I'd like you to meet, Hannah.' He dragged me to the opposite side of the ferry where we sat down on the bench next to a rugged, suntanned fellow who'd spent so much time in the out-of-doors that his sandy hair, eyebrows and even his watery-blue eyes looked bleached. ‘Hannah, this is Gator Crockett. He runs the dive shop on Hawksbill Cay.'

I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, so I could talk to the fellow face to face. ‘Paul tells me you're taking us snorkeling on Monday.'

‘Yup. Over to Fowl Cay.'

‘They say Fowl Cay's spectacular.'

Gator nodded wisely. ‘Only place better is Snake Cay down Little Harbour way, but the wind's rarely in the right direction down there. Kicks things up.'

A potcake lay at Gator's feet, his wheat-gold head resting on his paws, liquid-brown eyes considering me soberly. ‘Hey, pal.' I reached down and scratched the dog's ears.

‘Name's Justice.'

I smiled. ‘Good dog, good Justice.'

Justice rolled over and offered his stomach for some quality scratching. I obliged, and Justice's tail thumped happily until the ferry pulled in to Man-O-War and some of the passengers prepared to disembark.

Gator picked up his backpack and collected his dog. Holding Justice's leash, he stepped to the stern, put one foot up on the steps, then turned around and stuck his head back inside the cabin. ‘Best not to get too chummy with Alice.'

I blinked. ‘Why?'

Gator slung his backpack over his shoulder. ‘Just saying.'

And he was gone.

FOUR

SO THEY PAVED PARADISE AND PUT UP A PARKING LOT

WITH A PINK HOTEL, A BOUTIQUE AND A SWINGING NIGHTSPOT.

DON'T IT ALWAYS SEEM TO GO

THAT YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU GOT 'TIL IT'S GONE

THEY PAVED PARADISE, PUT UP A PARKING LOT.

Big Yellow Taxi
, Joni Mitchell

H
ow to recycle an ashtray.

In an uncharacteristic exhibition of do-it-yourself know-how, Paul had drilled three holes into the rim of a 1950-style melamine ashtray, threaded shoestrings through the holes, and suspended the ashtray from a hook just outside our kitchen window.

Voila
! A bird feeder.

I'd filled the feeder with sugar water, and the bananaquits were frisking around, squabbling over a foothold on the wildly swinging perch. The yellow and black wren-sized birds were so tame that they'd sit on your hand if there's something in it for them. Try granulated sugar.

A dark shape passed over the sun, distracting me for a moment from the cheerful little birds who were
squeek-squeek-squeeking
like wobbly wheels on a grocery cart. I craned my neck to see a frigate bird soaring effortlessly overhead, riding the thermals, his silhouette jet black against the blue sky. ‘They've got eight-foot wingspans,' Paul informed me lazily from his spot in the hammock. ‘Soar for days without flapping their wings, snatching food out of other birds' mouths.'

‘I'm impressed,' I said, admiring the bird's forked tail, like a swallow, only twenty times bigger.

‘That's how Man-O-War got its name, you know.' Paul swung his legs out of the hammock, stretched and shook out the kinks.

‘I thought the island was named after a racehorse, or vice versa.'

Paul winced. ‘A frigate is a warship, my dear, sometimes called a man-of-war.'

‘Ah ha,' I said. ‘Always useful to be married to someone with Navy connections.' I watched as he wandered into the back garden, picked up the business end of the hose and twisted the tap.

From the depths of my pocket, my iPhone began vibrating. ‘Speaking of connections, darling, my phone demands attention.' When I pulled it out, I saw from the display that the caller was my daughter, Emily, but in spite of repeated hello-hello-hellos on my end, the signal was too weak, so I lost the connection.

Paul was conscientiously watering the banana tree, once weekly, per our landlord's instructions. Holding the phone loosely in my hand, I let him know that I was heading out to the point to see if I could get a decent signal.

I set out on the sandy path that circled behind the bunk house and led into the woods. Daniel and his trusty machete kept the path itself clear, but bushes grew tall and lush on both sides, forming a natural canopy over my head. The foliage was so dense in places that the sun could barely penetrate to the forest floor, but where it did, the delicate shafts of sunlight reflecting through the steam that rose from the rain-wet leaves made me feel like I'd wandered into an episode of
Lost.

The path tunneled through the trees for another hundred yards or so, then opened into a clearing. Shielding my eyes from the blazing sun, I stepped out on to a jagged limestone cliff. Twenty feet below my feet the Sea of Abaco surged and foamed benignly against the rocks. I sat down on a primitive bench – two cinder blocks and a two-by-six – and punched in my daughter's number.

My granddaughter, as usual, picked up. ‘Shemansky residence. Chloe Elizabeth Shemansky speaking.'

‘Hey, pumpkin. It's your grandmother.'

‘I know that!'

Of course she did. How many people called her ‘pumpkin?'

‘Did you get my postcards, Chloe?'

‘Uh huh.'

‘Does that mean yes?' I teased.

‘The horse pictures were cool, Grandma. I like Bellatrix the best.'

At the ripe old age of eight, Chloe had two passions in life: ballet and horses. The wild horses of Abaco in particular, a critically endangered breed of Spanish barbs that had been reduced over the last century, by human intervention and habitat reduction, from a herd of several hundred to just eight – four stallions and four mares. Like the horses made famous by Marguerite Henry in her children's book,
Misty of Chincoteague
, the wild horses of Abaco had been shipwrecked on the island during the time of Christopher Columbus. But unlike Misty and her foals, DNA tests had proved that the Abaco barbs had been so isolated, their pedigree so pure, that they were unique in all the world.

‘I'm looking forward to your visit, Chloe.'

‘Can I see the horses?'

‘Of course you can. I'll call the woman who takes care of them and arrange a trip out to the preserve.'

‘Wanna know how my Brownie troop is raising money to help the horses?' Chloe asked.

‘Of course I do. That's wonderful! How?'

‘We baked cookies and cakes and went to the Naval Academy and sold them all to the Mids.'

It was a brilliant idea, and I told her so. Midshipmen had been known to eat just about anything, including baked goods prepared by eight-year-olds.

‘We got two hundred and twenty-three dollars and thirty-five cents. When I come, I'm gonna give it all to W.H.O.A.'

W.H.O.A. The Wild Horse Preservation Society of Abaco. Never had an acronym been so apt.

‘Where will I sleep, Grandma?' Chloe asked, suddenly shifting gears.

‘You and Jake can sleep in the snore box.'

‘What's a snore box?'