Bahamarama, page 12
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
“When did you last see Barbara?”
“It was after the shoot broke up. She bought drinks for everyone.”
“At Bahama Sands?”
“Uh-huh. It was kind of fun, actually. Everyone was stoked about the shoot. I mean, we got great stuff. The weather was good; the clothes were cute. The models Bryce found were awesome. The whole thing just came together. I think we really nailed it. So we were celebrating.”
“Yeah, I caught the tail end of it, but Barbara had already left.”
“What time was that?”
“Must have been almost nine o’clock.”
“Oh, she was long gone by then. I left after she did and that was barely eight. She had one drink and that was just because she had to. She was ready to leave, I could tell. I mean, on the beach she kept turning to me and whispering: ‘Do you think he’s here yet?’ And then she kept looking for you. ‘Do you see him? Do you see him?’ I swear, Zack, she was like a little girl. You know how she can be sometimes.”
I knew exactly how she could be sometimes. It was one of about a million reasons why I adored her.
“So that’s how I know she didn’t do anything stupid with Bryce Gannon,” said Steffie.
“But the two of them did leave the bar together.”
“Yeah, but that meant nothing, believe me. I was standing right there with them. Barbara said she was in a hurry to get back here to see you, and Bryce offered to give her a ride. He asked me to ride with them, but I said no. Mostly because I didn’t want to be alone with him on the ride back.”
“So it was just Barbara and Gannon?”
“Yes.” Steffie stopped, thought about it. “Actually, no. On the way out, this woman pulled Bryce aside and started talking to him. Maybe talking to him isn’t the best way to describe it. She was all over him, rubbing herself up against him. It was kind of disgusting, actually, but Bryce was eating it up. I remember Barbara was just standing there waiting while Bryce and this woman were going on and on. Barbara finally got tired of it and walked off. Bryce followed her and the woman went with him.”
“Who was she?”
“No idea. I’d seen her hanging around the night before, flirting with Bryce then. But there were lots of people hanging around and I had no idea who they were, either. A crowd tends to attract a crowd, especially with models and photographers and all that. This woman . . . hey, maybe Bryce got lucky.”
“Which still doesn’t explain where Barbara is.”
“You don’t think something could have happened to her, do you?” Steffie asked, in a tiny voice. “Have you contacted the police?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, shouldn’t you? I mean, they do have police here, don’t they?”
“I’m sure there’s someone. I haven’t checked into that yet.” I patted Steffie on the back. “There’s no reason for you to get upset.”
I got out of the golf cart.
“Do you want me to stick around?” Steffie asked. “Until she shows up? My plane leaves at one o’clock. I was just coming to say good-bye. But I could cancel.”
“No,” I told her. “It’ll be alright.”
I almost believed it.
24
The power was on when I returned to the cottage. I lay on the bed underneath the ceiling fan and let it cool me off while I decided what to do next. Ten minutes later I was still lying there. I had decided exactly nothing. I attributed it to the fact that my stomach was grumbling so loudly that my brain, in an act of solidarity, had staged a sympathy strike. I would get lunch. Then I would do something. Only I wasn’t sure what.
There was a knock at the door. Before I could open it, I heard Chrissie Hineman saying, “Stop! You have no authority . . .”
And in stepped a tall young man wearing a uniform—somber blue pants with red piping, a starched white shirt with gold and blue epaulets. He wore a white helmet with a silver crest on it and a strap that was pulled tight under his chin.
“Mr. Chasteen?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You must come with me.”
“I must?”
The policeman sputtered, and I said: “Where must I come with you to?”
“To the inspector’s office,” he said.
I looked at Chrissie. She offered a sympathetic shrug.
“He wouldn’t tell me why, Zack.”
“Is this about what happened at the airport yesterday?” I asked the policeman.
“The inspector will explain,” he said. “You must come with me. Now.”
He grabbed hold of my right arm. He pulled. I didn’t go anywhere. He grabbed hold tighter.
“You want me to make a big muscle?” I said. “It impresses small children and excites loose women.”
The policeman let go of my arm. I slipped into my sandals and he nodded me outside, following right behind me. Chrissie stood in the doorway watching as the policeman pointed me down the pathway.
“Zack, if there’s anything we can do . . .”
“Mind delivering lunch to the inspector’s office?” I asked.
For some reason, she thought I was joking.
The inspector’s office sat on Gaol Street, just up the street from the Harbour Island All-Ages School. I had walked past it many times on previous visits and never noticed it, not even with the Royal Bahamian Police crest on the wall out front. The policeman drove a white Mitsubishi van. He parked it on the street. When I reached for my door, he said, “I’ll get that.” He stepped around, opened the door, and escorted me inside the office.
The office smelled musty and was lit by a single fluorescent bulb that was in the middle of the ceiling and appeared to be in its final flickering throes. Along the back wall, several gray metal filing cabinets stood on either side of a closed door. A sign on the door said: OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY. Two metal desks sat at opposite ends of the room on the bare concrete floor. One of the desks held a radio dispatch unit. Its speakers blared a steady crackle of static. The other desk had a computer on it. There was a yellow legal pad next to the computer and, on top of it, a sharpened No. 2 pencil.
The young policeman pointed me to a chair by the desk with the computer. He stood right behind me so I couldn’t see him. I could only hear him breathe. A couple of minutes went by. I studied the framed photographs on the wall. There was a photograph of the current prime minister and a photograph of the chief commissioner of the Royal Bahamian Police. There were photographs of the seven members of the Eleuthera council. After I had studied all the photographs, I passed the time trying to figure out how I was going to explain my little end run at the airport the day before.
“You see, Inspector, it was pouring down rain and I couldn’t tell where I was going. The next thing I knew I was out on the road and . . .”
Of course, that still wouldn’t explain why I didn’t have proper documentation. But maybe I could talk my way through it.
“All you have to do is call Ruby Booby’s. It’s this topless joint in Fort Lauderdale and they’ll tell you . . .”
I was trying to come up with something better than that when the door on the back wall opened and a broad-shouldered black man in a blue suit and a red tie stepped through it, closing the door behind him. His close-cropped hair was mostly white and so was his mustache, but his face didn’t look any older than mine. He was well fed, but he hadn’t gone soft. He wore wirerimmed glasses and clenched his jaw as he walked across the room to the desk where I sat. He did not look at me. He picked up the pencil and spent a minute or two writing something on the yellow legal pad, still standing. Finally, he put down the legal pad, and his eyes met mine.
“Mr. Chasteen . . .”
I stuck out my hand. He shook it with a firm grip, studying my face.
“I’m Lynfield Pederson.”
“The inspector?”
He nodded and let go of my hand. He sat on a corner of the desk, looking down at me.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Chasteen, I need to see some identification. Passport will do, along with the yellow form you got when you came through immigration.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t bring that with me.”
“Oh?” said Pederson.
“No, Barney Fife here was in a hurry.”
I turned and smiled at the young policeman. He didn’t smile back.
Pederson said, “But you do have documentation, don’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I said.
Pederson studied my face some more, chewing his lip. And then he said: “Mr. Chasteen, I’ll get right to it. We have found a body . . .”
He paused, and in that instant I was just a speck on the ceiling looking down. The room was spinning, the damn fluorescent light was flickering. I was tiny—deep inside myself. Barbara, oh my God . . .
And then I heard him saying, “It is the body of a man.”
“A man?”
“A man we believe to be a Mr. Bryce Gannon. Do you know Mr. Gannon?”
“I know of him. What about Barbara?”
Pederson rubbed his mustache. He looked straight at me. I looked straight at him.
“How do you know of Bryce Gannon, Mr. Chasteen?”
“He was a friend of . . . a friend.”
“That would be . . .” Pederson looked at his legal pad. “That would be Barbara Pickering?”
“Yes, where is she?”
“But you did not personally know Mr. Gannon?”
“No, I did not.”
“And Barbara Pickering, would you know where we might find her?”
“No, I just asked you if—”
“Why is that, Mr. Chasteen?”
“Why is what?”
“Why don’t you know where she is?”
“Because . . .” I let it hang. And then I said, “Where did you find the body?”
Pederson stood. He walked away from me, hands folded behind his back. When he reached the filing cabinets, he turned around and said, “I’d prefer not to discuss the details at this time. And I’d prefer to ask the questions here.”
He said, “What was your relationship with Barbara Pickering?”
“Was?”
“Is. Sorry.”
“She’s a friend. A very good friend.”
“Exclusively?”
“Excuse me?”
“You saw her exclusively? And she you?”
“Yes, I . . . it’s not like I . . .”
“I understand you were released from Baypoint Federal Prison Camp, let me see . . .” Pederson studied his legal pad. “The day before yesterday, is that right?”
I nodded.
“And when did you last see Ms. Pickering?”
“It was late yesterday afternoon, just after I arrived on-island. She was down on the beach.”
“And did you speak with her at that time?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But you saw her?”
“Yes, I was watching her through binoculars.”
“Through binoculars?”
“Yes, she was on the beach, working. There was a photo shoot . . .”
“Ms. Pickering is editor of a magazine, is that correct?”
“Not exactly. She owns a magazine, several of them.”
“And Bryce Gannon worked for her?”
“He’s a photographer. Was a photographer. A freelancer from London. He and Barbara used to . . .” I stopped.
And Pederson said, “They used to what, Mr. Chasteen?”
“They used to be engaged.”
Pederson walked back to his desk and scrawled something on the legal pad.
“And you were watching the two of them through binoculars, is that right?”
“I wasn’t spying on them, if that’s what you are getting at.”
“Oh?”
“No. I was just . . . watching them. Just seeing where they were. And then I went down on the beach looking for them.”
“You went looking for Ms. Pickering and Bryce Gannon?”
“No, just Barbara. Ms. Pickering. Look . . .”
“Yes, Mr. Chasteen?”
“Are you suggesting that I had something to do with Bryce Gannon’s murder?”
“No one has said anything about a murder.”
“You said you found his body.”
“Yes.”
I stood up from the chair. The young policeman stepped beside me.
“Listen, goddamit, I want to know where Barbara is.”
Pederson stepped across the room and stood in front of me. I had a couple of inches on him. He didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by it. He spoke in a low voice, “I want to know where she is, too.”
Pederson picked up his legal pad and tucked it under an arm. He looked at the young policeman.
“Brindley,” he said. “I want you to stay here with Mr. Chasteen.”
Then he walked to the door.
“Wait a damn minute,” I said. Pederson stopped and turned around. “Am I under arrest?”
“No, you are not. But it would please me very much if you would remain right here until I return.”
He stepped outside, got in the white van, and drove away.
25
There was a clock on the wall. I watched it. Lynfield Pederson left at 11:20 A.M. About thirty minutes later, the churches let out, and people began passing by on Gaol Street. A couple of young kids stopped and looked inside the window, and when they saw me sitting there, they started giggling and pointing, and more kids came and looked and giggled, and finally Brindley got up and pulled the blinds shut. I sat there some more, listening to the static and occasional chatter coming from the radio and restudying the photographs on the wall.
At 12:30 P.M., an advisory from BASRA, the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association, broke in to say Tropical Storm Curt was located five hundred miles east of the Turks and Caicos Islands and moving almost due west.
At 12:47 P.M. Brindley undid the chin strap on his helmet and took off the helmet and began polishing it with a cloth he took from a desk drawer.
At 1:03 P.M. a woman’s voice broke through on the radio.
“Harbour Island, this is Nassau. Harbour Island . . .”
Brindley clicked on the mike.
“Harbour Island. Good day.”
“Good day. You got anything to log?”
“No, everything quiet.”
The woman on the other end said something I couldn’t understand, and Brindley said something back and I couldn’t understand that either. They talked for a little bit and I never made out a bit of it. Then Brindley clicked off the mike.
We sat there some more.
At 1:22 P.M. the phone rang. Brindley answered it and I heard him say, “No. I’ll have him call you.” Then he hung up.
At 1:35 P.M. I told Brindley I needed to use the rest room. He stood, put on his helmet, and opened the door that said OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY. He motioned me forward and I stepped through the door and into a room that was dark. Brindley flipped on a light. I saw that the room was really a garage. It was hot and stuffy. I saw a gun case with three rifles in it. I saw a pile of tools—shovels and rakes and hoes. I saw a shiny red Yamaha motor scooter sitting by the garage door. I saw a blue tarpaulin covering something on the floor. I looked some more and saw that the tarpaulin was covering a body. Water pooled around it, seeping into the porous concrete.
Brindley nodded me toward the bathroom. I stepped in and pulled the door closed behind me. Brindley opened the door halfway. He stood outside while I did my official business. Then we walked back into the other room, and I sat down at the desk with the computer on it and watched the clock some more. Brindley took off his helmet and went to work on it with the cloth.
At 2:25 P.M. the white Mitsubishi van pulled back out front and Lynfield Pederson stepped into the office. He was no longer wearing his suit jacket. His red tie was loosened and his white shirtsleeves were rolled up above his elbows. His yellow legal pad was tucked under one arm and he carried a tall paper sack with both hands. He put the paper sack on the desk where I was sitting. He sat down on the other side of the desk and opened the paper sack.
“You hungry, Brindley?” he asked.
Brindley said, “I could eat some.”
I thought I had handled myself pretty well so far. For three hours I’d sat there. I had been giggled at by small children. I had seen Bryce Gannon’s body in the back room. And I was trying not to go crazy worrying about Barbara.
I slammed a fist on the desk. Pederson looked at me.
“Did you find Barbara?” I said.
Pederson turned to Brindley. He said, “Why don’t you run home, Brindley, get yourself some lunch? I’ll sit here and talk with Mr. Chasteen awhile.”
Brindley strapped on his helmet and stepped to the door.
“And on your way back here, go by the fish house,” said Pederson. “Tell Mr. Otis we’re going to need his freezer. Tell him it might be for a couple of days. Tell him he’ll get twenty-five dollars a day.”
“You want me to take the dead man there?”
“You eat first. Then we’ll both take him.”
Brindley left. Pederson finished tearing open the paper sack. He took out two Styrofoam bowls that were covered with aluminum foil. He took out two plastic spoons. He slid one of the bowls and one of the spoons to my side of the desk.
“You like conch salad?” he said.
I nodded. I sat down.
“This the best you gonna find. Lavaughn, down at the Queen Conch stand, she just made it. I had her put hot pepper sauce on it. That alright? Lavaughn makes that sauce herself.”
“That’s fine, thanks. How much I owe you for it?”
“Don’t owe me nothing. Just figured you were hungry, might need a little something after sitting here all that time.”
I took the foil off the bowl. The conch salad was heaped high in the bowl—big chunks of white and pink conch meat and tiny chunks of green pepper and onion. I dipped the spoon into the marinade and took a sip and tasted the sour orange juice and the pepper sauce. It was some good sauce alright. Then I dug in with the spoon and ate for a couple of minutes. I had to chew on the left side of my mouth because the other side was where the shovel had broken my teeth. But it didn’t slow me down much. When I was half finished with the conch salad, I took a break.
