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The Track of the Sea Turtle
By Mike Pedersen
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Mike Pedersen
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4567-5606-2
Chapter One
From the high-flying jet airliners passing over the Lesser Antilles, the island of Santa Elena looked like a gourd. Its nearly circular bulk surrounded the chimney of a long-dead volcano and its neck gradually curved up and away, first to the northeast, then around toward the northwest. The small fishing village of Georgesport was located along the inside of the neck on the edge of a bay facing the calm Caribbean. The sharp ridge formed by a tumbling line of ancient volcanic flows shaded the village from the early morning sun. A few miles to the west though, the bright morning sunshine already illuminated several small islands surrounded by sugar sand beaches. Tropic breezes gently wafted through the tall palms. The gentle lap of the surf, the heady scent of hibiscus and the sounds of laughing children lent an air of sensuous serenity to the scene. Smiling vendors made their way down the narrow, cobbled roads of the old village hawking their wares – fresh fruit and fish, handmade baskets and jewelry of native coral.
On the flagstone veranda abutting the road in front of the colonial stone building that was the village's only hotel, a young woman sat sipping tea and idly tracing patterns in the warm, aged carved wood of her table. Thirty-something, slim and attractive, she seemed to be in no hurry as she watched colorful birds flitting among the blossom-laden shrubbery. Although she had been on Santa Elena for a little more than a week, she had been in the Caribbean for more than a month, and this was merely the latest of the islands she had visited. This time of year was considered the 'off season' and even though it was a little hotter and more humid than the peak tourist months, she was grateful for the reduced rates that allowed her to stay longer, even though she could write off a good portion of her trip as business expenses.
The plates containing the remains of her breakfast had already been cleared by one of the attentive staff. Across the bay, the vegetation-covered island peaks with their tops in scudding white clouds formed a dark green backdrop to the colorful native sailboats and a couple of visiting yachts. Her rattan armchair creaked as she turned and looked up the road. She noticed a man approaching, purposely striding up the road's center. Obviously not a native, his dress seemed a bit old-fashioned with the Panama hat and the tailored linen jacket, but he carried himself with an air of purpose and authority. Curious, she kept watching as he made his way up the road. He seemed to be known by the natives, as he acknowledged greetings from several as he passed by. As he neared, she noted he was deeply tanned and seemed very trim and fit. He glanced her way. Their eyes briefly met and she quickly averted her gaze. Her pulse increased as she tried to furtively track his progress and noticed that he was keeping his eyes on her. When he got closer, she became a little more nervous as he lightly took the single step up from the road to the veranda and approached her table. "Is this seat taken?" he inquired, his hand on the back of the chair across the table from hers. She looked around. There were no other patrons. Every other table was empty.
She was uneasy – by herself in a foreign country – anything could happen. She looked up at him, staring into his penetrating blue eyes. She also noted his easy smile. His voice told her that he was American and she felt a bit more secure. Something in her mind told her that he would abide by whatever she said, so she made a decision. "Suit yourself," she said with a tight-lipped smile, keeping her eyes locked with his as she purposely picked up her teacup and took a sip.
With a fluid motion, he swiveled the empty chair and lowered himself into it. He looked around, saw the women watching from just inside the arched doorway to the small restaurant on the first floor of the hotel and made a brief motion. One of the ladies quickly came up to the table. She was smiling and seemed eager to greet him and present a menu, but before she could say anything he said, "Coffee, black, please, and two slices of buttered toast and a fruit plate," then, turning, "Would you like more tea, Miss ...?" He indicated the small ceramic pot on the table next to her cup.
"Angela," she replied, feeling her face flush. "Yes, I would, thank you."
"Anything else?"
"No ... no, thank you. I've just finished my breakfast."
As the woman hurried away, he took off his Panama hat and set it on the edge of the table. His hair was sun-bleached straw blond and he had a slightly receding hairline. His face was creased and deeply tanned, obviously someone who spent a great deal of time outdoors. He could have been anywhere from his mid thirties to mid fifties. It was hard to tell with people who kept themselves that fit and active and outdoors. Before she could speak again, he said: "I think a good meal always deserves a follow-up cup of coffee or tea, don't you? Helps it digest and gives you time to plan your next moves."
"Next moves?" she blurted, not expecting this line of conversation, "What do you mean, 'next moves'?"
"The day is young. You don't plan on just sitting here drinking tea all day, do you?"
"Well, no, of course not. But I just don't consider what I'm going to do next a 'move'."
"I guess in my line of work I'm just used to trying to stay one jump ahead of the competition."
"And what is your line of work?"
There was the briefest hesitation before he answered: "Import – export Mostly ... and some other things to fill in the gaps."
One of the ladies approached with a pot of fresh tea that she set next to the woman called Angela, then went back to the kitchen and returned and set a cup and saucer in front of the man, filled the cup with steaming coffee and placed the carafe on the table. As she backed off, the woman who had originally taken his order returned, set a folded linen napkin down and arranged a knife, fork and spoon on it with one hand while expertly balancing the plates with his breakfast on her other forearm. She set the fruit plate down, then the smaller plate with the toast. She asked if there was anything else either of them needed, but they, mostly he, assured her they were all set. She, smiled, and backed off, leaving them with the admonition to just signal if they needed anything.
"So what's an import-export person doing in this backwater place? I thought they hung out in New York or San Fran or Hamburg or places like that."
"Well, the big boys do. I work on a smaller scale, mostly around the islands and along the coast of the mainland. I work on the 'buy low – sell high' principle. I keep my eye out for things that they have a lot of in one place and not so much of in another place, and then I try to equalize the supply and the demand and take my cut for doing it."
"It sounds like a lot of running around. Is it profitable?"
"It keeps me in pin money. How about you?" he said, changing the subject, "This isn't exactly a big tourist destination, is it?"
"I write. I like my solitude, and I like to experience what I'm writing about."
"So what do you write about?" Looking at her with her apparent youth and freshness, he was thinking of those flaccid, feel-good short stories in women's magazines or those titillating summer novels most women seemed to find so engrossing.
"I don't write 'about' anything in particular. I mostly write mysteries."
"Well, Angela, what kind of mysteries could there be in an out of the way place like this?"
"Well," she said back, "number one is you know my name but I don't know yours."
The trim and fit stranger chuckled. "Yeah, I tend to forget that part. It's Vince."
"For Vincent?"
"Yep, that's it. But the rest isn't van Gogh, if you're interested."
By now she was, but not enough to ask. Not just yet, at least. She was curious about something else, though. "Have you been here long? I haven't seen you here before."
"I just got here last night."
"Last night? I didn't hear any planes, and the ferry and the first bus don't come until later in the morning."
"Very good," he nodded, "you've been here long enough to learn the local transportation schedules. But I don't use the commercial stuff if I don't have to. I have my own boat."
"Must be nice. It must be a big one if you use it for importing and exporting."
"It's big enough to get me around the Caribbean by myself."
"By yourself? Doesn't that get a little scary?"
"It could – if I was dumb enough to go out in a storm or something, or if I was sailing straight across the Caribbean."
"Straight across?"
"Yeah, like from here to Jamaica or from PR to Costa Rica or something like that."
"Don't you go to those places?"
"Occasionally, but not in one hop. It's usually from one of the adjacent islands or something like that."
"But still, if your boat is small enough that you can sail it by yourself, you can't carry much cargo, can you?"
"It carries enough to make it pay. I tend to find small cargos that have a lot of value."
Her mind began churning as she mulled the possibilities. Was he a drug runner or a smuggler or something? This was not one of the bigger islands, and this wasn't one of the biggest towns on the island, either. "So why are you here? This doesn't seem to be a town that does a lot of importing or exporting."
"Actually, I've got a few days until my next job. I like it here because it is out of the way. Isn't that right, Julie?"
Angela looked up. One of the women had returned; a woman about her own age or maybe a little older; dressed in a peasant blouse with embroidered edging and a flowing batik-print skirt and with her black hair in braids coiled on top of her head. She was quietly waiting to be acknowledged to see if they needed anything else. The lady smiled broadly and nodded vigorously in agreement. "Oh, yes, Mister Vincent. We are very much out of de way! No t'ing ever happens here. Nobody come here unless dey sure dey want to!"
"Well, this lady here wanted to. She thinks there are mysteries here, do you know that? Are you treating her nice?"
"Oh, yes, Mister Vincent. Best room in de house, t'ird floor, front right, as you know."
"Yeah, that's a good one. But have you fixed that leak in the doors?"
"Yes sir. Andy, he fixed it de very nex' day. No problem since."
Angela listened to this in silence. It was obvious that Vince was known here, but she was still uncomfortable with him. And even more so now that he knew where she was staying. And she still didn't know his last name.
"Well, you take good care of this lady. She's a very important writer, you know. Needs her peace and quiet. And, Julie, put her breakfast on my tab, would you?"
The woman assured him that she would as she smiled, nodded to Angela, backed away and left.
"You didn't have to do that," Angela said. "I already have a tab here, with my room."
"Don't worry about it. Consider it a token of thanks for my not having to eat alone."
"So, what was leaking up there? I didn't see any sign of a leak."
"It was the French doors going out onto the balcony. I was here during a hurricane and water was coming in around them. Got the rugs wet. So, what kind of mysteries have you uncovered here?" he asked, changing the subject.
Angela paused a bit before she answered. "Oh, I didn't uncover any mysteries. I'm just trying to get a feel for the place so I can create a mystery here."
"Well, what have you seen so far? Aren't too many mysteries on this road." He swept his hand to encompass the scene before them.
She had to admit, this place seemed like most everyone's ideal of the old colonial tropical village off the beaten path, where someone could live in peace and quietude. The hotel side of the road was lined with mismatched ancient stone buildings. Some were private residences, but most had a small shop of some sort on the ground floor with the owner's quarters above or behind. Across from the hotel, the weathered, wooden home of a fisherman stood between the cobbled road and the bay. To the south, the road angled toward the bay until there was no more room for buildings and it was separated from the gravelly shore only by a swath of grass and patches of low shrubs. The commercial pier was down that way, where the inter-island ferry landed and where the fishermen unloaded their catches. A few small boats of varied age and condition were moored to floats on either side of the pier. The one small government building, necessary to process the inter-island travelers, stood at the foot of the pier. The road continued around the bay to the south, buildings gradually petering out, until it became a mere footpath winding tenuously around the craggy slopes that descended to the water's edge. Beyond the hotel to the north the road continued to curve inland until it lost the shoreline and began to climb the close hills where small flocks of goats could be seen grazing. Angela knew that in the hills behind the hotel were other roads and paths and other buildings, but up to this point she had felt too timid to venture far off the main road alone. Vince seemed to be reading her mind when he continued without waiting for her to answer: "I bet I can show you stuff that you could use in your stories."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I think it's safe to say that you haven't done much exploring off the main drag, have you?"
"No, not really. Is it safe?"
"It is if you're with me."
She took a long sip of her tea as she analyzed what he had said. Did he mean it wasn't safe if she was NOT with him? Was he talking about robbers or, she shuddered, rapists? Wild animals? Rough terrain?
He let the silence linger a while. Finally she spoke. "So, are you volunteering to be some kind of tour guide or something?"
"Yeah, you could call it that, if you want me to."
"But why?"
"Why not? What would you be doing if I hadn't come along? Wandering down to the ends of the paved places and wondering what was beyond them? Poking your head into the shops and backing out when one of the ladies asked you a question? Watching the fishermen on the shore and turning away when they looked at you?"
She felt her cheeks flush as she began to formulate an angry reply to his comments. But then she stopped herself. She realized that, in essence, that is what she had been doing since she had been here. The realization of how she must appear to others came as a shock to her. And, with the shock came the resolution that this was not her and would not be her. She was not a neophyte. She had traveled a lot, and most of it had been alone. Until Vince's blunt assertions, she had felt that she knew her way around. She steeled herself as she deliberately placed her teacup down in the center of its saucer and locked her eyes with his. "Okay, Mister Vincent, show me what you can do."
A brief flicker of surprise crossed Vince's face, but he kept his eyes locked with hers as a smirk of a smile curled his lips. He quickly regained his calm demeanor as he slowly poured the last of the coffee from the carafe into his cup. He took a sip and set the cup down. Then he broke eye contact and reached for his Panama hat. The tension of the moment seemed to dissipate as he unceremoniously plopped it on his head. "We'd better get going then, before it gets too hot."
Angela nodded and, reaching into the empty chair next to her, picked up her big, floppy sun hat and equally unceremoniously placed it on her head. She pushed her chair back, picked up her woven purse and looped the long strap over her shoulder. Vince smiled at her as they stepped away from the table and he took her arm in his and 'helped' her down the step to the road with exaggerated politeness. They shared a smile and silent chuckles as he waved to the ladies hovering around the bar in the covered part of the restaurant and started up the road. They didn't look back, as they knew the women would be animatedly chattering over what they had just witnessed.
"I'm assuming you've seen everything between here and the pier already," he said as the road steepened and they began to climb.
"Yes. There are some interesting little shops there, actually. I've picked up several neat little things to take back with me."
"So when will that be?"
Angela acted as if she were concentrating on her footing for a moment while she considered how to answer his question. He had an engaging way about him, but she was still a little uneasy about the way he had approached her and sort of commandeered her attention. "Why do you want to know? she finally responded.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Track of the Sea Turtle by Mike Pedersen Copyright © 2011 by Mike Pedersen. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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