“The Frasers will get over it,” he assured Armbruster. “A few stiff whiskies and Lord Fraser will be dining out on it.” Skye was considerably cheered by this news. Foster was a commercial pilot with Manchineel Air. He flew in and out of the strip every day; and the twin-engine 421 was a lot more airplane than the 180. “Tell me about this shark attack.”
“There’s not much more to tell. All I know is what I’ve been told over the radio. Kids. Teenagers. Pretty well gutted.”
“I haven’t heard of shark attacks in these waters.”
“Probably happened well north of here.”
Skye walked over to where Overfine waited on the tarmac to help with the luggage. “It’s been a long time, Overfine,” said Skye as he shook his servant warmly by the hand.
“Too long, Mister Skye,” Overfine replied, a hint of reproach in his voice. Lifting two large soft-sided suitcases out of the luggage compartment, he placed them on the tarmac. He started to reach for a small black plastic case further back in the compartment, then withdrew his hand. Staring at Skye with a look of almost superstitious dread, Overfine asked, “Be that Mistress Jocelyn?”
“Yes. It’s okay. I understand your feelings. It’s best I handle her remains, anyway.” Skye reached in and picked up the black case with both hands.
Jason Carmichael was on duty behind the customs and immigration desk and Skye knew he was in for the full treatment. Jason took himself and his responsibilities very seriously and insisted on going by the book, despite pleas from the Manchineel Company that this was no way to welcome the rich and famous to the island. Skye had been coming to Manchineel for six years, but it was as if Jason had never seen him before. He peered suspiciously back and forth between Skye and his passport photo before stamping the passport with a loud thump. Overfine, who knew the drill, had already opened Skye’s suitcases for inspection. Jason sifted through them with expert thoroughness, held up the two bottles of vodka, glared accusingly at Skye before putting them back and nodding to Overfine to close the cases. When Skye placed the small plastic case on the table, Jason glared suspiciously at it and demanded to know what was in it.
“My wife’s ashes,” Skye replied evenly.
Jason recoiled, crossed himself, and waved Skye through.
Toting the suitcases, Overfine led the way to a Land Rover in the airport parking lot. Like all the other Land Rovers on the island, this one was Brazilian-made. It was ideal for coping with the steep and winding tracks that passed for roads on the island. In any event, the Manchineel Company, having struck a favourable deal with the Brazilian manufacturer, had decreed that it was the only passenger vehicle that would be allowed on the island. The edict also specified that all of them were to be painted white. Henry Ford in reverse. Although technically they were Land Rovers, they were never called anything but jeeps. A green tree frog painted on the doors and the hood identified Overfine’s vehicle as belonging to Skye’s rambling villa, the Whistling Frog.
Adrienne Jones, “the lady who fished for the hotel,” as she described herself, was walking up the road from the sea wall, balancing a basket of sea urchins on her head. Skye had been aimlessly thumbing through a dictionary of first names one day and had been struck by the aptness of her name. Adrienne’s brown eyes had blazed with excitement when he told her that her name meant “woman of the sea.” It confirmed her own belief that she was a special person. She was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit that so closely matched her skin that from a distance her taut, shapely body appeared to be nude. Skye hastily stowed the black case in the back of the jeep where it was out of sight. It was common knowledge that Adrienne was a mambo, a high priestess of voodoo who presided over the ceremonies when the drums began to beat in the native village. As she drew closer, Skye could see that she was visibly excited. Omitting any words of welcome, she demanded, “Hear about the bodies?”
Skye nodded. “I saw them on my way in.”
“I want you to take Adrienne there.”
The peremptory request didn’t surprise Skye. He and Adrienne had developed a sort of working relationship in that he sometimes did favours for her in return for her letting him observe the voodoo rites over which she presided. Their friendship had been cemented four years ago with the incident of her only daughter’s almost fatal appendicitis attack. Penelope had come down with an attack of acute appendicitis that Adrienne—sure that she could cure it with white magic—had let go far too long. A panic-stricken Adrienne had finally asked Skye for help. He and Jocelyn had immediately flown the adolescent girl and her distraught mother to Barbados where an ambulance waited to rush Penelope to the hospital. They operated immediately and the surgeon said that the appendix had started to leak and would have perforated within the hour. Two weeks later, when Penelope was fully recovered, Skye had ventured to reprove Adrienne for relying on her magic and having put her only child at risk.
“You was my white magic,” she retorted.
“I will be happy to take you there, Adrienne. I was intending to go there myself. But what about your catch?”
“We drop it by the hotel on the way.”
“Let me put it in the back. The guests at the hotel will dine well tonight,” Skye said as he took the heavy basket from her and placed it in the rear of the jeep, rearranging the suitcases to hide the black case. She jumped nimbly over the tailgate and sat on the bench seat, her wet bathing suit leaving a mark on the plastic cover.
Catching Skye looking at her, Adrienne smiled wickedly up at him and slid a strap off one smooth shoulder. “Adrienne miss you, Skye. You stay away too long.”
“I missed you too, Adrienne.”
Besotted with his beautiful wife, Skye had managed to ignore Adrienne’s blatant sexuality and tempting body. But with Jocelyn gone.... He brushed the thought aside and climbed into the driver’s seat.
The road from the airstrip passed directly in front of the one-storey office building of the Manchineel Company. The Company ran the island with an iron hand. Everything was directed toward protecting the privacy of those holidaying on the island and preventing the outside world from intruding. To achieve that end, no cruise ships were allowed to call, private yachts had to receive special permission to anchor, and supply boats had to be on their way within four hours of docking.
Like many Caribbean islands, Manchineel suffered from a chronic water shortage. The landscape Skye gazed upon with such affection was mostly brown grass interspersed with clumps of coconut palms, banana trees, and a magnificent poinciana, whose bare branches would be laden with brilliant red flowers at the end of the dry season. Down by the beach manchineel trees grew, from which the island took its name. The manchineels produced a green fruit resembling an apple that was extremely poisonous, as were its leaves and its milky sap. The Company had posted signs warning of the dangers of the tree and painted red rings around the trunks to identify them.
Overfine brought the Land Rover to a halt at the Sugar Mill, a converted stone warehouse that was now a small but luxurious and very expensive hotel. Penelope, who worked there as a waitress, came out to greet Skye and take the basket of sea urchins from Adrienne. In the two years since he had last seen her, her budding beauty had more than fulfilled its promise. That much-maligned word “nubile” was the only one Skye could think of to describe her slender, long-waisted figure.
“She’s beautiful, Adrienne,” said Skye as they drove away from the hotel towards the site of the accident.
Adrienne sniffed. “She think she too big for this island.” Normally Adrienne spoke fairly grammatical English, but when she was upset, it fell apart. Among her own people, she spoke the patois that only those born and raised in the islands could understand.
Skye pulled in beside a jeep and a bicycle parked on the edge of a small cliff overlooking the beach. The jeep had a small red cross painted on the side. That was the medical clinic’s vehicle, fitted out as an ambulance. But there was nothing that Manchineel’s resident physician, Sir George Glessop, could do for the bodies splayed out on the sand. Sir George rose to his feet,