Chapter Twenty-six
Thank God for my on-time plane. I stuck my hand into the recess in the wheel well above the front driver’s-side tire of a gold Chevy Silverado pickup and probed around. Dirt. Something greasy. Keys—right where Rashidi had promised to leave them. Excellent. I love it when a plan comes together.
A voice behind me pulled a smile from my lips. “Good afternoon, miss. Welcome to the islands. Can I interest you in a rainforest tour?”
I spun around to hug Rashidi. “What are you doing here?”
“I figure I stay to greet you, since I only drop the truck five minutes ago,” he said sheepishly.
I put my hand on the front hood of the Silverado. Still hot. I laughed. “You were cutting it close. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.” I glanced at my watch, then unfastened it, removed it, and dropped it in my purse. I was on island time from now on. “Hey, I have an hour before I have to be at the Annalise closing. You have time for me to feed you like I promised?”
Rashidi straightened a pretend collar on his green-with-yellow-letters “University of the Virgin Islands” t-shirt. “Let we go.”
I followed closely behind Rashidi’s old but well cared for red Jeep as he led me to his favorite vegetarian restaurant. I had forgotten about his whole vegan lifestyle thing. Oh, well. I could always drive through Wendy’s on my way to the bank, although when I’d done that on my last visit I’d had to honk the chickens out of the drive-through lane, and then sat there for twenty minutes until my food was ready.
Rashidi and I sat at a window table inside the dark soul food restaurant. Jimmy Cliff was crooning “I can see clearly now,” the reggae song by Johnny Nash he’d remade and performed far better than the original. There wasn’t an excess ounce of body fat on anyone besides me in the place. And I thought I was skinny. I was also the only patron without dreadlocks.
I perused the menu, lost. Protein, protein, where could I find protein? A turbaned Rasta waitress took our order. In a tone of reverence, Rashidi ordered rice noodles with Asian pesto and stir-fried vegetables with lemongrass. I settled on a red pepper and garlic hummus and roasted Mediterranean eggplant, and hoped for the best.
“The food here manna from the gods. And it close to the university. That good. I teaching a class in an hour,” Rashidi said.
I realized I knew next to nothing about Rashidi, other than he was kind to white tourist ladies. “What do you teach?” I asked.
“Coupla things. I’m an associate professor, not tenured, so I teach classes as part of degree programs, like botany, and I do continuing education classes, too, community stuff,” he said. “This afternoon I teaching a hydroponic farming class.”
I was impressed, and lost. “A what?”
“Hydroponic farming. I trying to get the local farmers to use fish to fertilize their plants. Farm the tilapia, farm the crops. It’s Jah’s perfect match.”
“Jeez Louise, Rashidi, where’d you learn to do that?”
“I got my degree in botany from the University of Florida. I learn about the fish farming there.”
“So where do the rainforest tours come in?” I asked him. He was a professor dragging the likes of me up and down the hills of the rainforest. On a haunted house tour, no less.
“Cash,” he said, and his white teeth gleamed in his wide smile. “U.V.I. don’t pay enough for me to eat here.”
Our food arrived. Rashidi bowed his head and whispered a prayer under his breath, so I ducked mine, too. I decided to eat my eggplant first, while it was still hot. I slid my fork slowly into the gooey golden mess and lifted it to my face, trying to smell it without making my concern obvious to everyone in the building. Allspice. Nutmeg. Garlic. The aroma was shockingly good. I slipped it into my mouth and the flavors melted into my tongue.
“Oh my God,” I said, or tried to, through a mouth full of eggplant. “This is amazing.”
Rashidi nodded as he ate. We chewed in bliss together until we had polished the surfaces of the bowls before us. Rashidi pushed his chair back a few inches from the table like a fat man from Thanksgiving dinner. This mannerism from the lithe Rashidi tickled me.
He spoke again. “Ava not doing so good. She pretty beat up about her friend dying.”
I wondered if Rashidi knew that Guy was more than a friend to Ava. I wouldn’t be the one to unload that on him, just in case. “I hope I can help her,” I said.
“It help just you coming. A good distraction. She talking ’bout working with you to find out what happen to your parents here,” he said.
“Yes. She’s already been invaluable with that.”
“The cop on that case my school chum. Michael. He at the University of Florida for a year when I there, but he drop out and come home.”
“Really?” I asked. “Do you know what happened to him? I was told he went out fishing alone and drowned less than a month after my parents died.”
Rashidi shook his head. “Make no sense. I fish with Michael, time to time. He never go out alone, he can’t swim. Loved to fish, scared of water. They found his empty boat floating a mile off the west end of the island.” He shook his head again, his eyes far away.
I swallowed. “You think someone killed him?” I asked.
“Dunno. Maybe an accident and folks dem scared they’d get in trouble. Maybe he helped into the water by someone bad. Maybe I wrong and he fish alone.”
My antenna quivered. I couldn’t believe Michael’s death was a coincidence.
The Rasta waitress brought our bill, and I handed her a twenty and a ten. It covered the bill plus tip. The food here rocked and was cheaper than the flying fish hut. Quite a find.
Rashidi changed the subject. “Ava say you a lawyer.”
“Was.” I looked down. “Now I’m a house remodeler.”
Rashidi’s eyes cut to the wall clock, and he stood abruptly. “And I a teacher almost late for class,” he said. “I’ll come around Annalise later today. Ava want me to bring her by.”
I stood too, and we walked out together. “Thank you so much, Rashidi. I love the truck.”
“No problem. Thanks for the food,” he said. He put an arm around my shoulders for a side hug, and we parted ways.
I got in my snazzy new-to-me Silverado and fussed and putzed with the gizmos and gadgets on the dash. Satisfied with my changes, I drove into Town. I headed straight to the Bank of St. Marcos to meet Doug for the closing on Annalise. Doug would never be my favorite person on the island, but we chatted amiably about my move, my new property, and hurricane seasons of yore. Ms. Nesbitt only kept us waiting for half an hour before she ushered us into the bank’s main conference room. I don’t know why it surprised me, but Ms. Nesbitt wasn’t the heavyset aging woman I had expected. Instead, she was petite, 5′1″ or less, and couldn’t have topped a hundred pounds. While she was well over forty, she looked younger than me. She wore a two-piece knit suit in dark green with gold buttons and a skirt that ended an inch above her knees. Her perfect legs ended in closed-toe black pumps. Very professional.
Doug kissed her on both cheeks. “Good day. How are the husband and kids, Lisa?”
It seemed all was forgiven between the two of them for the earlier almost-sale to her mystery buyer.
“Oh, good day to you, too, Doug. We all good. Thank you for asking after them.” She turned her diamond-bright smile on me. “Congratulations, Ms. Connell. Welcome to our island, and to your new home.”
“Thank you so much, Ms. Nesbitt. Now I just have to figure out how to finish the house so I can actually call it a home,” I said.
“I set you up, Ms. Connell. The contractor for the buyer that fall through, he already know the house real good. He go up there and put a proposal together for you. He come with my highest recommendation. I give him your number. Here’s his card.” She handed me a white rectangle with “Junior” and a phone number written on it. Well, that would work.
“Thank you. I appreciate that very much,” I said.
“He meet you there today, th
en?” she asked.
“Sure, that would be fine,” I said. Why the heck not, after all?
Although the closing lasted two hours, Doug pronounced it speedy and a smashing success. The three of us parted jovially in the bank lobby. I got back into my truck and headed out to Annalise down Centerline Road. The Silverado rocketed over the road’s notorious potholes like a flying tank. I had dreamed of a big truck with a lift kit like this since I was an elementary schooler. I was punch-drunk in love with it already.
Half an hour later, Annalise came into view. On a romantic whim, I parked on the side of the road to take a better look from this vantage point. I got out and a dilapidated car pulled up beside me, all its windows down and Puerto Rican music blaring. I felt a twinge of nervousness. Was I about to get robbed? I anticipated my defense, but relaxed when I saw a family in the car. They were doing the same thing as me—paying homage to Annalise.
“Good day, miss. She’s beee-ewe-teefull, ain’t she?” the woman asked me, leaning her head out of the window. Children spilled over from the back seat to the front, tugging on her hair and pointing at the imposing structure standing tall in the distance like a peak above the mountain of trees in the valley below.
“Good day to you, too. She is breathtaking,” I said, and shivered.
I returned to my car and pressed on, eager to close the distance between me and my house. Half a mile from the house, I saw the gate. Stone columns without the stones around a gateless opening. My Grinch heart grew three sizes as I turned onto the driveway and made my way through the welcoming rows of guava bushes and flamboyant trees. When I pulled up beside her, I leaped out and ran straight to the front steps.
I sat down and put my cheek against a pillar, and positive energy seeped into my body from the sun-warmed concrete. I closed my eyes and listened to the birds singing. The breeze cooled my face. This was my peaceful place, where I could leave the world behind and dream any magical dreams I wanted. Nothing could bother me and my fortress of a house.
I whispered to her, “We are both going to be OK, Annalise, more than OK. I know we will.”
Lost in reverie, I somehow missed the sound of footsteps.
A voice behind me said, “’Scuse me, miss?”
I jumped so high and fast that I scraped my cheek on the rough edge of the unfinished column. I turned and saw a dog and four shirtless local youth. One of the boys was riding bareback on a scruffy paint horse. Another carried some kind of long-barreled gun. The other two held machetes. If I had seen these young men in Dallas, I would have grabbed for my pepper spray. Who was I kidding? I would have grabbed for my pepper spray right then and there, if I’d had it with me. As it was, I positioned my feet shoulder-width apart, my right foot just slightly in front of my left, my knees soft, hands loose.
“Good afternoon, miss,” one of the boys said. “We didn’t mean to scare you. We didn’t think anyone here. We from there,” he pointed in the general direction of where I thought the Pig Bar was located, “and we like to come up here and do some limin’, time to time. Sometimes we stay in this house.”
Underneath his twig-filled dreadlocks, this was a polite kid. I willed myself to act naturally. They were my new neighbors, after all. Sort of.
I said, “Well, I bought this house. I like it a lot, too.”
A chorus of “no ways” and “iries” rose up. “Irie” was, I had learned from my masseuse at the spa, a local expression that meant “that’s cool” or “it’s all good,” as in, “Ms. Connell, how that massage make you feel? Irie?”
The boys wanted to hear what I planned to do with Annalise, which was a short conversation. I didn’t have the slightest idea yet. As we wrapped up our chat, Ms. Nesbitt’s Junior—or someone I really hoped was him, since it was a strange man in a truck parking beside my house—showed up. The boys waved to me and headed straight back down into brambly manjack I would have sworn was impenetrable moments before, making the sound of a rainstorm as they rattled the seedpods on the small tan-tan trees.
The man I prayed was Junior was wearing low, baggy jeans and a knit Rasta cap over long dreadlocks. He was also carrying a few extra johnnycakes around his middle. I remembered what my father used to say about men with soft hands and wondered if it applied to contractors with big guts. But maybe his workers did the heavy lifting. I shouldn’t stick out my tongue at good fortune when it sent me a contractor referred by a reputable source and available to work so soon.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Junior, here for Ms. Connell.”
Phew, it was Junior. I hoped this, after the Wild Boys’ visit, would be the last of my scares for the day.
Junior and I discussed in broad concept the work the house needed. “Tomorrow, early, I bring my plumber, my ’lectrician, and some boys dem to clean.” He gestured upwards and then made a broad sweeping motion. “Big clean. I put dem up on the scaffolding and they scrub down the ceilings and walls, way up high, all the way down low.”
Cleaning? That sounded heavenly. We agreed he would bill me for time and materials and we shook on it. Junior got back in his brand-new dark blue Chevrolet Silverado. Well, well. It made my Silverado look like it belonged to the hired help.
I saw Rashidi coming up the drive in his Jeep as Junior left, with Ava in the front seat beside him. Estate Annalise, otherwise known as Grand Central Station. I hugged Rashidi as he got out of the Jeep, then Ava, longer and tighter, after she came around from the passenger side.
“I’m so sorry about your friend,” I said in her ear.
She squeezed me and her head rubbed against mine as she nodded. Her phone rang. “Jacoby,” she said. “I have to take this.” She walked fifty feet away and sat against the thick trunk of a mango tree. Its heavily laden branches draped a shade of leaves and mangos three feet above her head. She kicked a rotten one away from her with her heel. She had tied her long curls back in a red scarf that doubled as a headband and a low ponytail holder, and she twisted the end of it around her finger.
“So, the house like you remember her?” Rashidi asked.
“Better,” I said. “Isn’t she fabulous?”
“Yah mon, she fabulous. But what Junior Nesbitt doing out here? He hasslin’ you?”
Nesbitt?
“I hired him, at the highest recommendation of another Nesbitt at Bank of St. Marcos. Ms. Nesbitt, the bank officer there in charge of Annalise. Only I didn’t know him as anything other than Junior from her referral.”
Rashidi chuptzed. “The little woman his sister.”
“Did I mess up?” It was all about who you knew. And didn’t know.
“Maybe he straightened out. I got your back. There is a problem, though, a big problem,” Rashidi told me.
My stomach clenched. “What is it?”
“You buying Annalise and all. This mean I gonna have to change up the grand finale of my rainforest tour. Ain’t no big thing if it just another ole rich white folk house.”
I stared at him blankly until I saw he was kidding me, and I laughed.
~~~