Read Afoot on St. Croix (Mystery in the Islands) for Free Online Page B

years of rum consumption, had already burned off the earlier shot from the sugar mill bar. Her yellowed eyes cracked open the tiniest of slivers as she watched the hangar doorway, where the most recent seaplane arrivals were exiting the secured loading zone.
    She waited, her gaze sifting through the passengers until the last one finally walked through the opening: a scruffy little man in cargo boots, T-shirt, and cutoff camo shorts.
    “Char-lee Bak-ah,”
Gedda said with a seedy stare.
“Ah, dere you are.”
    •
    GEDDA HUNCHED HER thick neck down into her shoulders as Charlie strode purposefully out of the hangar and turned left toward the boardwalk. Her dry lips rolled inward, gumming what little remained of her
whittled-down teeth.
    Charlie seemed confident in the day’s mission; his expression was firm and resolute. He glanced at the hag’s crippled form as he walked past, tapping the brim of his cap in greeting.
    But ten steps farther, he paused, appearing to hesitate. His face began to soften, as if he were reconsidering his game plan. He reached down to the return ticket stuffed inside his pants pocket, his fingers fiddling nervously with the top edge.
    Muttering to himself, Charlie stopped and stared out at the harbor, his emotions now clearly conflicted.
    After a long pause, he checked the time on his watch. Then he took in a deep breath and continued, this time far more tentatively, down the boardwalk toward the Comanche Hotel.
    Gedda shuffled after him, pushing her cart out of the empty lot and onto the walkway’s wooden boards.
    “Oh, Char-lee,”
she whispered softly.
“You shudda nevah complain’d about dem shoes.”

~ 8 ~
    The Comanche
    HASSAN RODE ON his mother’s hip, one hand wrapped around the folds of her cloak, the other clutching the edge of her headscarf, as she crossed the gravel courtyard to the rear entrance of the Comanche Hotel.
    His free-spirited sister had already slipped free from their mother’s grasp. Elena ran ahead, skipping down the crumbling path that circled beneath the hotel’s elevated pool and second-floor pavilion.
    “’
Ey
, Elena, come on,” the mother called out in frustration, struggling to keep up. It was difficult to maneuver over the rough ground in her high-heeled shoes. “Hassan, you’re going to have to walk,” she said briskly. Disentangling the boy’s fingers from the cloak’s dark fabric, she set him down and secured her hand firmly around his.
    The woman glanced up in time to see her daughter disappear into a covered walkway that ran beneath the side of the pavilion.
    “Elena, wait!”
    The woman sucked in on her teeth, shaking her head with disapproval. Hassan gasped as his arm jerked forward, but his protesting cry went unheeded.
    “She’ll be the death of me, that girl.”
    •
    THE MOTHER TEETERED down the path, vigorously tugging Hassan along behind her.
    The surface soon transitioned from a composite of coral and concrete to a layout of uneven paving stones, further impeding the woman’s progress. Ducking beneath a low-hanging branch, she pushed aside an overgrown fern and peered anxiously down the narrow walkway. She pushed the folds of the scarf away from her face as she searched for signs of her wayward daughter, but the passage was empty.
    The belligerent
honk
of a delivery truck sounded from the next street over, and the woman rushed forward, her heart in her throat.
    Hassan winced as one of the fern fronds whipped back and slapped him in the face.
    •
    A MOMENT LATER, the mother rounded the corner at the end of the covered passage and entered an alley that serviced, on one side, the hotel’s main entrance, and, on the other, a small convenience store. Hassan in tow, she chugged up to the store’s open doorway.
    Just inside, she found her daughter’s curly pigtails bouncing in front of a rack of candy bars.
    “Elena,” the woman panted, her anger tempered with relief.
    Smiling cheekily, the girl turned toward her mother and pointed