In Harm's Way (A Martin Billings Story Book 3) Read online

  “She said her friend, Mr. Davis, I assume, loaned her the boat.”

  “And you anchored it in the yacht basin?”

  “Nice and tidy, but she’s on a lunch hook. The ground tackle wasn’t much to choose from.”

  “You check her out thoroughly? Even with no holes, she could still have some leaks.” He winced. “That storm bringing a lot of rain and I don’t want some yacht sinking there. That would be a nasty mess.”

  “When we took the lady ashore, she told me she wanted to change clothes and then would go straight to talk to Warren Davis. She figured he was at The Barracuda. They would call the yard and get it hauled out. I told her it would need an inspection.”

  He rubbed his face. “Well, then…” With his concerns addressed, Walter nodded and took up the paperwork I’d put on his desk, going through it with his customary efficiency. As the acting immigration officer, as well as Port Captain, he finished by stamping our passports and handing them back. “What’s the lady’s name?” He asked. “The one what was on the yacht.”

  “Donna,” I said, remembering. “Donna Devro. She’s staying at Gazele’s.”

  He nodded to let me know he’d heard. “Later, I’ll call Gazelle and tell she I need that woman to let me know what’s happening with the boat,” he said, rubbing his chin.

  “You’ll want to talk to her personally,” I said. “She’s a pretty lady.”

  His eyes smiled. “And I is one happily married man.”

  “Still…”

  “You know, I ain’t recalling that I seen Warren Davis of late. Not since he checked in after making a run over by St. George’s. I usually see he down at Barracuda of an evening.”

  “Well, maybe he left the island.”

  Walter didn’t seem convinced. “Maybe. Usually, folk let me know they boat gonna be sitting there or if a friend gonna be on it. They know I keep an eye out and it prevents misunderstandings.”

  “Well, then I have no idea,” I said, as I scooped up the stamped documents that showed that we’d cleared immigration, complete with fresh entry visas in the passports. “Guess I best get my ass over to the customs dock and start the paperwork for the cargo. I don’t want to get in trouble with Mr. Charles for dillydallying. He doesn’t much like it when I hang around and socialize with you.”

  Walter laughed. “That Mr. Charles, the pastor of God’s Will Church, don’t like very much at all in this blessed world.”

  “When you call Gazele, please tell her that we’ve got her cargo for The Boat Shop and will be unloading it soon. She’ll need to come and personally convince Mr. Charles she isn’t running contraband.”

  Walter grinned. “That woman will be glad to hear that, for certain. She and Jeff been complaining about running out of overpriced tings to sell them yachties.”

  I laughed. The lovely Gazele was, first and foremost, a pillar of the business community. “Well, we have a fresh supply of overpriced things guaranteed to put a smile on her face.”

  “And then you gonna have some money in your own pocket.”

  The idea of money made me wince. “That won’t last more than a second or two. We need to put some diesel in HARM’S tanks,” I said. “She’s a good boat, but that big engine can get damn thirsty on that run and we were fighting a swell most of the way.”

  “Speaking of thirsty, I guess I gonna see you at Barracuda tonight.”

  “Damn right,” I said. “Jackson was talking about showing up too.”

  He scowled. “You see Jackson already? I thought he went out this morning.”

  “He was passing by, heading south at a good clip just as we got in the lee of Grenada. He shouted over the usual… that he was just going out to come back. Making a day trip.”

  Walter sighed. “I hope what he is doing out there is just fishing and not messing with other damn things.”

  I laughed. He meant smuggling — the most lucrative catch of the day. “I couldn’t say one way or another.”

  “Thing is, you being his friend and all, you wouldn’t if you could. But tell him he gotta be careful. Everett been warning him how there are people who got eyes on him.”

  “Last I heard, Everett was going in the opposite direction — north.”

  “Maybe so… maybe so,” he said. “Today, anyway.”

  I stood and slapped Walter’s desk. “Well, I need to get off to see Mr. Charles, and probably get a lecture on how God helps people who are timely and prompt in their doings.”

  “Most likely.”

  I heard Walter snickering as I left. I didn’t mind, knowing he was just happy it wasn’t him.

  4

  With the first part of the usual formalities for entering a new port done, I walked over to the customs shed where I found Bill chatting rather amicably with the always stern-faced, almost severe and very correct, Mr. Charles. Impeccably dressed as always, the sight of his starched white shirt and pants made me squirm. I’d long found it ironic that most of the official uniforms of the officials of the islands proved to be classic and timeless examples the wrong way to dress for the tropics. They adhered to a code of dress handed down, with grand and meaningless ceremony, by the British colonizers who, in their imperial and imperious wisdom, feared ‘going native’ far more than the possibility of dying of heat stroke due to an excessive use of starched collars.

  I understood that. Why, those codes persisted in the face of commonsense was another matter.

  For all the pompousness of starch and his arch correctness, Mr. Charles was also an excellent customs official — one of the most efficient and honest I’d encountered in the islands. Little, if anything, slipped by him. Now he took my manifest and glanced at it.

  “You wait,” he said. While we obediently waited, he called the American who was listed on the form as the official importer of record for the bulk of our cargo. The man, one Ralph Rogers, was a recent retiree from New York, who was foolish enough to think that building his dream home on the island was a good idea.

  I understood the dream well enough and couldn’t argue with his choice of island at all. But a building project on a small island is no simple task to be undertaken lightly and it isn’t ever going to be cheap. Being on an island means that everything be imported. The Billing rule of thumb says that, the smaller the island, the greater its dependence on imports, the higher the customs duties — another incontrovertible indication of the contrary paths of official policy and common sense.

  Ralph had hired us to bring him a load of wood, bags of cement, electrical components, and the various hardware it took to build a house. He’d hired a shipping company in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad to collect everything he needed, put it on pallets, and shrink-wrap it. That made it easy for us. They brought it to the customs dock in Trinidad. We came alongside and loaded it all on board with the foredeck crane and stuck it in the cargo hold.

  With his goods arriving, Ralph Rogers had to come (personally) to the customs shed and be told the amount of the exorbitant import duty. Then he needed to go to a bank and make the payment and return with a receipt showing he’d paid it.

  Although any shipment can involve complications, I knew there’d be no trouble with this load. The Trinidad-based shipping company Ralph used had a reputation for being scrupulous about their work and meticulous in doing the paperwork to document it.

  Assured that Mr. Rogers was en route, Mr. Charles let us crank up the foredeck crane, opened the forward hatch, lift the pallets from the hold, and put them on the dock where Mr. Charles slowly, carefully, accurately determined that our manifest did, in fact, match the goods listed on it.

  Ralph Rogers, who had quickly become savvy about such things, arrived with a truck, some local muscle, a grand smile, and the right paperwork. While his men loaded the truck, Ralph went to the bank and returned with a receipt for payment. Clearly, he didn’t mind what I saw as onerous at all.

  The balance of our shipment was for the local businesswoman named
Gazele. She owned the guesthouse of the same name and The Boat Shop, which was, as the name implied, a chandlery — the only place on the island that sold the yachties all manner of things that break on a yacht, from toilets, to anchor chain, to windlasses. What they didn’t have on hand, they brought up from Trinidad, taking care of all the problems of importation for a hefty fee.

  Today, I watched as Gazele arrived in a pickup truck, with her younger brother, Jeff, sitting in the seat beside her. As she got out of the truck, her shorts showing fine legs, she stared at the two pallets we’d put on the dock.

  It did my heart good to see her standing there. The lovely curvaceous island woman, probably in her mid-thirties, stood about five five, possessed sparkling, enthusiastic eyes and wore big hoop earrings that somehow made her big brown eyes seem even bigger. She deliberately, provocatively some say, topped all that off with a truly captivating smile that let her rule her bar and restaurant, The Barracuda.

  The sweet and alluring package that was Gazele attracted two husbands in rather quick succession. Both men had died within two years of their marriage, one leaving her the guesthouse and the other, The Boat Shop.

  While the men’s deaths were officially labeled as being from natural causes, obeah, the local variety of voodoo, still a vital part of the culture, had to be reckoned with. People always managed to have some doubts, although they wouldn’t express them to her face.

  This well-known history meant that Gazele was treated with a great deal of respect, and more than a little apprehension, by all the men on the island.

  A more interesting story, in some ways, was the way she turned both of the businesses she inherited around. Neither had been any great shakes, but she leveraged them, making herself an economic force on the island. The Boat Shop, when she inherited it, was called The Bait Shop — it wasn’t any more than that and struggled to get by. Gazele had the foresight to use its location near to all those yachts to better effect. Stocking up on boat parts foreign boaters needed and wanted proved far more profitable than selling bait, or anything else, to the local fishermen. In the process, she learned the ins and outs of importing, doing the documentation, setting up routines that simplified the tasks, and then reaped the benefits.

  Her brother Jeff was a muscular young man, with a friendly and generally positive attitude and absolutely no aptitude for business — the muscle between his ears being the least developed. But he acted as Gazele’s efficient right hand.

  She stood there with her hands on her hips. “It all there, Martin? You bring me everything that I asked for?”

  “No, Gazele, we ate some of it on the way,” I said. “Would I dare call you to come get your stuff if it wasn’t all there?”

  She gave me a big smile. “No, mon. You wouldn’t do that to me.” After a glance at Mr. Charles, who nodded, she waved at her brother. Jeff pulled out a knife and began cutting away the shrink wrap, then loading the goods into the truck one box at a time. Mr. Charles watched, checking the items off on the manifest as Jeff put them in the pickup.

  While Jeff did the work, Gazele came over and grabbed my arm, moving close, smiling up at me. “You come down to the Barracuda later today and I buy you a drink.”

  “That sounds good to me,” I said. “Real good. Say, did that woman, Donna, get in touch with the boatyard?”

  Letting go of my arm, she gave me a puzzled look. “What woman?”

  “The one I dropped on your dock this morning. She said she is staying at your place. An American named Donna Devro.”

  I saw realization cross her face. “The woman Walter asking about. I never heard of her.”

  “She ran a black ketch up on French Reef today,” Bill said. “You surely heard about that.”

  Gazele laughed and shook her head. “I hear some foolishness about you boys dragging a beat-up yacht in, but like I tell Walter, there ain’t no white woman staying at my place.”

  “She’s not white. American, but not white.”

  She scowled. “Ain’t no single woman staying at my place.” She grinned. “Fact is, ain’t got nobody there at the moment. Got some folks coming in on Tuesday.”

  I scowled. “She told us she was staying there and was going in to change clothes.”

  She shook her head again. “She not coming in my place for sure. It locked up this morning.” She chewed her lip. “That black ketch you drag off the reef, Walter say that it Warren Davis boat.”

  “Yeah. She told us that. Said he loaned it to her.”

  Gazele snorted. “Can’t see the man letting her take it off alone.”

  Bill looked at me. “Think she was stealing the boat?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “If so, she didn’t plan it well.”

  “That don’t mean shit, seeing as there’s no entrance exam for boat thieves,” he said reasonably. “No IQ test and no regulation at all. If you’ve a mind to take up a career stealing boats, you can just set up shop in a heartbeat.”

  “Maybe we are in the wrong line of work,” I said. “If that was a serious attempt at stealing a boat, the competition seems to be sad.”

  Gazele had lost interest in the direction of our conversation and wanted to turn it back to something important to her. “If you see that woman again, tell she I got a room if she needs one. I can give her a good price — an off-season rate.” Gazele looked out toward the opening of the harbor.

  “Sure,” I said. “If she doesn’t get locked up for stealing the man’s boat.”

  Gazele’s thoughts were elsewhere. “Haven’t seen that nice Mr. Davis in a couple of days, now that I think on it. Usually see him at the Barracuda.” Then she looked at me. “I tell Walter that too.”

  “Well, the woman and the boat aren’t my problem anymore,” I said. I hoped that was true; with so much confusion about that damn boat, I had my doubts. In my experience, trouble tends to spread fast.

  I pointed to Jeff, who was lounging against the loaded pickup. “You’ve got your stuff, and Bill and I need to move HARM out to anchor before Mr. Charles starts charging us for being here.”

  She grinned, then brushed against me with a subtle shift of her hips that suddenly, gently, pressed her warm, soft body against my side while she kept her charming smile focused on me. She wanted it clear that that was no accident. I liked both the caress of her body and the meaning she gave it.

  “I looking forward to buying you that drink in my bar tonight,” she said.

  “I’m looking forward to drinking it,” I said.

  We would be there even she hadn’t made the offer. Her bar was a meeting place for local business people as well as yachties. It was the place to let it be known that HARM was available for cargo to or from the island. Unscheduled cargo runs are, by definition, always erratic. We had a month to wait before our next big contract, bringing some supplied down from Martinique to a grocery store. That would not be enough to keep food and rum on the table.

  Flashing me a grin that managed to combine seduction with an intriguing twist of evil to come, she turned and walked to the truck where her brother waited. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as moved with an exaggerated, seductive feminine wiggle, that had her hips gyrating far more than absolutely necessary. She covered the distance and glanced back over her shoulder pointedly as she got to the truck, just making certain that Bill and I both had watched the performance and were aware that the provocative motion was for our benefit.

  We had watched… closely, and we knew.

  “Damn,” Bill said. “Too bad.”

  “About what?”

  “With that gal, being stalked is such a serious business.” He smiled. “Seems she’s got her sights on you, my friend.”

  “She’s just being her restless self. Nothing serious.”

  “You can go on telling yourself that if you like, but when it comes to indulging herself, that is one serious woman.”

  “Well, if she is just after indulging herself, then maybe I don’t mind.�
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  “Keep your eyes open,” he said. Then, pleased with himself, he went on board to start the engine, leaving me to untie the mooring lines and wonder if he wasn’t right. I had enough to deal with at the moment, without having to figure out the desirable Gazele’s game. However delicious she seemed, I needed to avoid complications.

  As she drove off, I was also well aware that, whatever I thought, she might have other ideas on the subject.

  5

  The squall looming to the east, that had been threatening all morning, hit hard about midday, wrapping us in a cocoon that turned the sky black, made the temperature drop abruptly, and unleashed a furious torrent of rain that pounded down on the steel roof of the wheelhouse.

  Bill had gone to his cabin for a nap and I sat at a desk, reveling in the reassuring drone of rain on the roof. Snug in harbor, with HARM secured by two anchors, the torrential downpour became tropical music. At that moment it helped numb the pain of doing the ship’s books.

  Paperwork! I hate it, all of it — paying invoices for work the boatyard had done, thinking about ordering supplies, and looking at our cash flow over the next month. Not that all the news was bad, but I just have no love for adding columns of figures.

  When I decided to get into the cargo freighter business, when Bill talked me into it, that was one aspect I didn’t give enough thought to. It never occurred to me, but there it was. I figured I had been lucky. What business didn’t have some serious downsides and unexpected gotchas? As such things go, this wasn’t exactly hell and the rest of it was good, something I enjoyed and that meant I spent time at sea.

  At the moment, fuel was our most pressing need. Although HARM was reasonably fuel efficient, her tanks held a lot of diesel. In the scheme of things, that was a good thing, as taking on fuel up island was an expensive option and bunkering it in our tanks let us plan when and where we bought fuel. But when it started getting low… well, now I was looking for a business reason to get down to Trinidad again soon, where it was a lot cheaper. Until we got paid for this run, we didn’t have the money to top up. Now we had the money but weren’t there.