Chris Rogers's Blog, page 11

Columbo & Ed McBain

So I’m probably the last person on Earth to know this, but I was reading an 87th Precinct novel by the late Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) when I recognized the story – not just the plot, mind you, but the story – as one I’d seen recently on a Columbo rerun. The novel is titled So Long as You Both Shall Live (1976).

Curious, I looked it up and sure enough the episode adapted from McBain’s novel aired as “No Time to Die” (1992). Columbo fans might notice that it doesn’t follow the usual style, in which Lieutenant Columbo “gets a feel for” the real killer early on then spends the next 90 minutes or so hounding that person until the truth is revealed. It’s also the only episode in which no one is killed, and one of the very few in which Columbo actually draws his gun.

Another of McBain’s 87th Precinct Novels, Jigsaw (1970),  was adapted for the episode “Undercover” (1994). In this one, Columbo sheds his ever-present baggy raincoat and wears a number of different suits as he goes undercover to investigate. While I did read Jigsaw, and I also saw “Undercover,” I confess the similarity in story lines didn’t hit me.

While researching all this, I made another discovery. In Season 10 (1993), the episode “It’s All in the Game” was written by Peter Falk, who, as all Columbo fans will know, starred as the rumpled detective. Though devoted to his wife, Mrs. Columbo, whom we never meet, the detective is nevertheless – and completely out of character – attracted to the prime suspect, played fetchingly by Faye Dunaway. Those of us who adore him were possibly more anxious about the threat to Columbo’s virtue than whether or not he would nail the killer. Early in the episode, Dunaway buys him a new tie, and in contrast to his usual untidy appearance, Columbo wears it every time he goes to see her.

Peter Falk, though best known for his role as Columbo (1968-2003), actually enjoyed a long and distinctive acting career. His first stage appearance at age 12 was in a camp production of the “Pirates of Penzance.” His first television appearance was in 1957 in an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents. After being turned down for many film roles because of his artificial eye, he landed a small part in Wind Across the Everglades (1958). The missing eye had been removed when he developed a retinoblastoma at the age of three. Later, it was that same squint that became Falk’s trademark in film and television. He won 5 Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, and was nominated twice for the Oscar.

My painting (above and below) was done from a screenshot of Peter Falk as the guardian angel, Max, a character he played in a trilogy of holiday TV movies from 2001-2004. His posture and expression often had made me smile, and this time I simply had to paint him. After pausing the movie playing on my television, I snapped a photo and created this watercolor head study of one of my favorite actors.

“Max,” 15″x22″, watercolor on Arches paper

 

 

 

Here Lies a Wicked Man – Snippet 12

Booker noticed the dining room crowd had thinned. Roxanna carried a coffee pot from table to table, filling cups, probably taking a fair number of compliments on her cooking. He wondered how a woman with Roxanna’s looks and culinary skill had escaped marriage. He hadn’t seen a ring. Nor had he noticed the telltale ghost of one that marked the newly divorced.

Gary Spiner, leaning back in his chair with a toothpick dangling from his mouth and a greedy expression in his eyes, followed Roxanna’s movements as she circled the room. He’d finished his meal yet seemed to be waiting for something. Maybe a date with the innkeeper for later that night? Booker didn’t feel easy about that.

Not his business, of course, but studying her, he couldn’t deny a stirring inside that had little to do with sex. Not to say his carnal urges had dampened any, but at forty-six, and with a good meal under his belt, he could think with the higher part of his mind. He wondered what’d brought Roxanna to a down-home place like the Masonville Bed and Brunch. Aside from being attractive, substantial nose and all, she appeared to be bright, talented and possibly a good businesswoman. She had the curves and muscle tone of a thirty-year-old, yet a presence and grace that placed her a decade older. In short, she was every man’s dream. Or maybe she fit Booker’s own dream so well he assumed the feeling was universal.

Either way, she intrigued him. He’d like to spend a few hours merely talking to the woman. Except for having to ride home with Emaline, he wasn’t above hanging out until the inn closed and getting to know the innkeeper better. Assuming Roxanna didn’t already have a date.

A family paid their check and trailed toward the door. The innkeeper waved a friendly goodbye, then scooped up a fresh pot of coffee from the sideboard and headed straight to Booker’s table. He stood and pulled out a chair.

“Lady, I’ll bet you could use a cup of that coffee yourself. Sit a spell. I’ll make your rounds with the pot.”

Across the room, Spiner looked like someone had slapped him with a sour dish rag.

“Actually, everybody’s taken care of. Let me grab a cup—”

“No. Now sit.” He guided her into the chair. “I’ll fetch the cup.”

Waiting for her to settle so he could push the chair closer to the table, he caught the scent of her hair, a musky vanilla fragrance. She’d been sweating lightly as she hustled among the tables. Tortoiseshell combs held the heavy tresses away from her face, but a few tendrils had escaped to curl damply around her cheek. Booker resisted a sudden urge to lift the auburn waves and allow circulating air from the ceiling fan to cool her neck. He took the coffee pot. His gaze wandered from her sculpted shoulders to the generous cleavage framed in lace at the neckline of her old-fashioned dress. If the woman had one detail not utterly, delightfully feminine, Booker couldn’t see it.

Crossing the room for the cup, he noticed Emaline and the Sheriff staring at him, wondering, no doubt, what was going on with him and Roxanna. Well, hellfire, let them wonder. He avoided their gaze.

“If there’s such a thing as love at first sight, that was it,” Roxanna said moments later about finding the inn. “I came around the curve at the bottom of the hill, driving my ancient Volvo, and this old granny of a house sat above me. Her rose window sparkled like a new broach. Purple shadows hid all her warts. Even before I saw the For-Sale-By-Owner sign, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life here.”

Booker watched her mouth curve around such words as “before” and couldn’t recall ever seeing anything quite as sensuous. He wanted to keep her talking just to see it again. “Do you come from around here?” he said.

“No, but I grew up in a small town like Masonville. Everybody knows everybody else, and what they don’t know they invent just to have stories to tell. I like small towns.”

“Then you must lead an unblemished life, one that doesn’t attract gossip.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that! I’m sure the folks of Masonville will have a grand time at my expense. They’ll harvest plenty of grist for the gossip mill when they dig into my past. Let them dig. I’ve never done anything I’m ashamed of.”

“Never?” Booker couldn’t make the same statement.

“Maybe I don’t see wrong the way other people do.”

“You mean, if something seems right, you’ll do it, even if others might consider the deed immoral or illegal?”

She smiled, and Booker felt it all the way to his toes.

“Let’s say I’ve been known to exceed a speed limit when the road and the weather were both clear and I felt like traveling.”

Put it that way, Booker figured, and most of the adult population of Texas would agree. Nothing made your foot want to step heavier on the gas pedal than a cross-country highway without a soul in sight. He couldn’t help wondering what other laws she’d be willing to break.

“I saw you traveling pretty fast this morning, on the jogging trail around Turtle Lake.”

“Oh?”

She frowned, and Booker wanted to capture the moment on film. Somehow, he would persuade her to sit for a portrait, posed right here in the dining room with the lace curtains and crystal lamps, maybe sporting a floppy straw sunhat. Thinking about the sun, though, he wondered if the porch outside might be better, sunlight picking out the Titian strands in her auburn hair while the soft shade of a tallow tree deepened her blue eyes—an old-fashioned woman in front of an old-fashioned house. Yet, he could also see her in a snappy business suit, carrying a briefcase… or a black satin gown, with diamonds at her ears and throat.

Suddenly, the gown Booker imagined was made not for the dance floor but the bedroom, and he gulped a swallow of coffee to wet his dry mouth.

“You were running down the road.” Hearing the gruffness of his voice, he cleared it before continuing. “Carrying something—”

“Oh, look, the Kettlesons are leaving. I’ll need to close out their check.” She hurried away in a swirl of green gingham and vanilla musk.

Booker enjoyed the back view for a moment, with a vague notion Roxanna was relieved to be drawn away from any further questions. He noticed Gary Spiner’s sour expression had turned downright hostile. Hunched over his empty plate, Spiner scowled at Booker from under a brow furrowed enough to double as a washboard. For some reason, the man’s hostility lifted Booker spirits.

Deciding it was time to recycle the iced tea he’d consumed, he went in search of the men’s room and found it down a short hallway. On his return, he saw a door to a small office ajar. He glanced in. Several photographs hung on the wall. He couldn’t resist a closer look.

These undoubtedly were the pictures Emaline had alluded to. Booker had to admit there was more of Roxanna here to see. He could understand why the innkeeper had said the townsfolk would gossip. In the nine framed photos, Roxanna wore three different costumes: Cleopatra, an Indian maid—Pocahontas, maybe—and a cowgirl. In several poses she had removed various pieces of clothing. In others only a few glittery triangles kept the innkeeper from being barefoot all over.

Dazzling. Booker couldn’t deny a lusty desire creeping into his loins. Had she displayed these photographs in her private office thinking no one would see them? Or figuring people would find out anyway, and better sooner than later?

In her Cleopatra getup, Roxanna teased a man in the audience with a snake. In her cowgirl boots—and not much else—she’d lassoed a fellow. And in her Pocahontas feathers, she apparently had just plunked a bowstring, skillfully piercing a man’s hat with an arrow.

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Paradise Cursed – Snippet 8

CHAPTER 7

While I didn’t want to appear discourteous to the three chattering passengers seated at my table, I could not keep my eyes off the intriguing brunette across the way. It wasn’t Erin Kohl’s magnificent dark hair or her hauntingly beautiful profile that drew my gaze. It was the sudden cold fear in her eyes when she regarded the cards her sister laid on the table.

“… married five times, divorced three,” Ola was saying, “widowed by two, mother of four and doggedly determined to live hearty before I start burping grandbabies.”

“This is our first time on a barefoot cruise,” said the man Ayanna had introduced as Nelson Woods. “And you say you’ve done this before, Ola, so perhaps you could give us a hint of what to expect.”

“The brochure was so vague, wasn’t it, Nelson?” The wife’s voice conveyed a measure of disdain.

I brought my gaze back to find her staring at me with narrow pale eyes. Bitsy? Betsy? This recent inability to recall names was an embarrassment and damned annoying.

“Discovering the particulars of your voyage one day at a time,” I said, infusing my smile with practiced charm, “is part of the Sarah Jane’s allure. Much like unraveling a mystery.”

Ola laughed and patted Bitsy-Betsy’s arm. “Hon, you gonna love it, so just relax. Let the cap’n and his crew do their thing. First day, though, is usually at full sail, so I hope you got your sea legs on.”

As they prattled, my eyes drifted to the troubled profile across the way…and without warning my thoughts harkened back to a time of pain and helplessness, but also a time when love filled my heart to bursting, a time two centuries past. American vessels were being attacked in the Caribbean, suffering heavy losses and driving President James Monroe to a furious declaration of war on piracy.

I learned that Monroe’s fighting ships could not give chase over shallow reefs and sand banks. Then word went out that captains with fast ships and certain skills might earn hefty rewards as scouts. Having long since grown sick of plundering and thievery, I offered the Sarah Jane into service. Small and quick, much like the pirate schooners commanded by Charles Gibbs— a particularly nasty piece of work who once cut off the arms and legs of a captured captain— the Sarah Jane slipped quietly into hiding places from Cuba to Venezuela and chased pirates into the open sea.

It was on one of Gibbs’s captured and burned out cargo ships that I found Remi Babineaux, beaten, bruised, her feet and hair scorched, as the ship continued to smolder. I could scarcely believe she was breathing. My crew found forty-five other souls aboard, all dead. When I tried to hasten the woman away to safety, she jolted out of her semiconscious state and fought me like a rabid dog. I managed to carry her to the Sarah Jane, where I bandaged her feet, daubed her cuts with antiseptic and, slowly over the following days, learned that Remi Babineaux was accompanying her family’s heirlooms from New Orleans to Saint Martin. Her parents were relocating there to care for an aging aunt. Remi had insisted on taking passage with the cargo, thinking it adventurous.

“The cargo is gone, but I will deliver you to Saint Martin,” I promised, during one of her lucid moments.

“No.” Her brown eyes beseeched me. “I cannot face them. Please.”

She became so upset that I agreed to let her remain on the Sarah Jane until she fully recovered. Unexpectedly, a breath of relief filled me when I knew she would not depart immediately. As weeks passed, her battered face healed. Her hair, which I had clipped quite short to dress her burnt scalp, grew into a cap of brown scruff. Scarcely had she regained her strength than she demanded I allow her to work off the debt she imagined she owed for her passage and care.

“You owe nothing,” I told her firmly. “To fill your time, however, Cook might have a chore or two.”

She pressed her lips together firmly in an expression of annoyance, yet all she said was, “Thank you, Captain.”

I came to know that expression quite well, as Remi Babineaux became one of my best crewmen while at the same time stealing my heart bit by bit. And now I saw a similar expression of annoyance as Erin Kohl pushed away the deck of cards.

***

Ayanna fought down nausea. Pain ripped through her belly as she slipped from the dining room into the dark. Stomach bile rose in her throat. The pain and queasiness were only symptoms of the other sickness that lay deeper, darker inside, impregnating her bones.

A fresh breeze washed over her. She breathed the air deep inside to quiet her belly and fell onto a lounge chair overlooking Montego Bay. Kicking off her shoes, she rubbed briskly at her arms to warm them up.

Never had she felt so cold, even that spring when she traveled north to New York City, yeah. So many tall buildings, people rushing every-which-way. So many clothing stores. How did one wear so much clothing? Did those hitey-titey ladies not sweat wearing one gansey over another gansey, two dirty shirts to wash instead of one?

Shivering, Ayanna worried about getting sick. Her palms were wet with perspiration. Her upper lip felt damp. A claw of bitterness scratched at her from inside. Maybe sickness was part of the Bokor’s curse. Ayanna prayed she would be able to fulfill her duties aboard the Sarah Jane—at least until they sailed. She needed away from Jamaica, far from the

Bokor, far enough to weaken his magic. And she needed to find stronger magic to break the curse.

Sarah Jane’s strong magic was legend, but nobody Ayanna spoke to could say how the ship’s magic worked. Every story was vague in detail, high on spooky innuendo.

She gasped in pain as cramps attacked her feet. Her toes curled under. Both feet arched from her ankles as if she were standing on point. They felt so cold, as if dipped in ice. Ayanna tried to stand, walk it out, relieve the cramps. Cha! Sweat poured from her brow, no matter that she was freezing.

Captain McKinsey expected her to make happy passengers in the dining room, yeah, but she cannot do so like this. She peered around at the empty deck and began limping, stumbling toward the companionway to her cabin below.

Once inside, she fell on the bed, legs drawn up as she tugged the blanket over her shivering self. After a bit, the quaking calmed and she reached down to rub her cramped feet. The skin felt rough, deeply callused. How could that be?

Lifting a hand outside the blanket to click the bedside light, she felt a fresh round of shivers, but after another bit of warming up, she squirmed around to stick one foot near the light. When her fingers touched cracked skin, she drew the blanket aside.

Her foot shone with gray-green iridescence, like fungus or —

Ayanna’s stomach heaved as she realized what she was seeing, touching. Scales.

Her feet were growing scales?

Nah, that was wrong, not fish scales. Cool to the touch, and with tiny bumps like in picking up a —

She bolted to the toilet, fell beside it. Vomited.

When her stomach was empty, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, pulled herself up to the sink and ran water to rinse. Steadying against the shivers and the foot cramps and her heaving stomach, she peered at the skin on her other foot. It too was gray-green rough, like snakeskin. Or baby crocodile belly.

Touching it brought more sickness to her stomach and a red-black haze to her brain. She stumbled to the bed, weak, impotent. Her body turned to mush. She crumpled on the floor, lay her cheek against the cool linoleum.

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Here Lies a Wicked Man Snippet 11

Roxanna sniffed… something was burning.

She dashed into the kitchen, rescued the last pan of yeast rolls before they turned black and eyed them critically. Only a few corners had burned. A snip, a scrape, a brush of seasoned butter, and they’d taste as scrumptious as ever. Next, she lined up her orders where she could see them all at a glance: roast beef, broiled trout, roast beef, turkey salad—

She’d never managed an inn before opening this one a few weeks ago. Lord, what had she been thinking? Tonight could go down as her best and worst, the night she blew her shot at entrepreneurship.

Scooping tomatoes onto a plate, she splattered her hand then resisted the urge to lick it off. Didn’t need the health inspector on her case. Meat, potato, vegetables, bread…

Booker Krane popped through the door, Emaline close behind.

“John Lindy’s on his way,” Roxanna said, shoving two filled plates into Booker’s hand. “first table left of the door—that is, if you don’t mind doing more of what you’ve been doing.”

When he grinned and headed out, she gave the next three plates on a tray to Emaline. “Couple beside the front window, with a baby.”

She set four plates on the counter then paused to rub her gold locket for luck. A pinch of determination is worth a pound of try, Aunt Jane had engraved on the back of the gold heart. Maybe tonight would work out, after all. True enough, Roxanna had never managed an inn before, but she’d helped out in her great aunt’s tea room all those years ago.

She scooped potatoes onto all four plates.

Good years they’d been, too, except for the first few months after the accident. She was five years old, riding happily between her parents on the big bench seat of their vintage Oldsmobile. Somewhere ahead two cars crashed. A truck driver carrying half a ton of steel pipe stomped his brakes directly in front of the Olds. Her dad was talking, couldn’t stop fast enough on the slick street, and the pipe sticking off the back of the flatbed truck was suddenly coming through the Oldsmobile’s windshield. Roxanna could still hear the screech of metal, the crunch of breaking glass. Could smell the hot, sticky liquid that gushed over her. She remembered screaming and screaming and finally being pulled from the car, drenched in her parents’ blood.

“You wouldn’t talk or smile,” Aunt Jane told her later. “Lord knows, you had little enough to smile about. Then one day I was sorting through some photographs. I came across a snapshot of you and your folks the day we all went to Disneyland.

“Just a slip of a thing you were, thin as a pencil, sitting on my lap. You took the picture from my hand and, with a timid finger, gently touched the faces. ‘Mommy. Daddy,’ you whispered. ‘Gone.’

“The first tears you’d cried since the accident slid down your cheeks. Then came the flood. I rocked you all night while you got the crying done.”

Roxanna slid two filled dinner plates onto another tray. The locket and all its memories she dropped inside the neckline of her dress to keep it out of the pots as she bent over the wide commercial stove. Aunt Jane’s help would sure be welcome right now.

Twenty minutes later, with Booker and Emaline passing plates as fast as Roxanna could dish them up, the crisis was over. Food levels had run dangerously low. A few items disappeared entirely.

“Everyone seems happy,” Booker Krane told her, carrying out the last plate. “Oh, and two new tables are seated.”

Roxanna dampened a rough kitchen towel with a splash of ice water and pressed it to her neck. What would she have done without Booker and Emaline? If this happened again, she’d need to consider hiring someone to help out on Fridays—which meant paying someone.

Smoothing her hair, she stepped into the dining room to take the two new orders. Her smile slipped when she saw Gary Spiner, who owned the sporting goods store. Gary had been showing up more and more often since his wife left, usually timing his visits near closing to be the last person in the dining room when Roxanna locked up, and hinting that he could solve her money problems.

“What money problems?” she’d said once. But bad news travels fast in a small town. Gary was active with the local merchants’ association. He probably knew she had a stack of overdue bills in her office. Judging by the fancy new house he’d built overlooking the town, she supposed he had money to back up his offer.

“Freedom has a price tag,” Aunt Jane was fond of saying. It had cost Roxanna every penny she’d tucked away for the past ten years to become an independent business owner.

Allowing anyone to buy a piece of the inn would put a finish to her freedom. If the price tag for independence was longer hours and harder work, so be it. She’d never been afraid of hard work. And if tonight’s crowd was an indication of business to come, the inn just might make it, providing she could stave off the bill collectors a few more weeks. And providing she stayed focused. No distractions. No diversions. No extravagances. No men.

Feeling hot, tired, yet suddenly happy, she surveyed the dining area. Contented chatter floated around the room. Masonville had finally noticed the new inn in town.

When John Lindy arrived, Roxanna introduced him to Booker Krane then sent him on his flight to Dallas with take-out finger foods and a promise of pie and coffee later.

“Here,” she whispered to Booker, handing him a pair of plates heaped with roast beef and vegetables. “Yours and Emaline’s are on the house. Without your help, a lot of people would’ve walked out hungry.”

Making her rounds to take dessert orders and chat with customers, Roxanna began to relax. This was the easy part. Making friends was one of her strengths, one of the reasons she’d chosen this business when she quit the old life and moved away from the city. She only hoped the folks of Masonville would continue patronizing the inn after they inevitably discovered how she’d earned her living in the past.

CHAPTER 7

Booker’s wrenched knee throbbed from rushing around. Otherwise, he felt as fine as a new puppy, knowing he might’ve salvaged that commission. His 4×5 transparencies on their way to the late pickup in Dallas, he speared the last bite of the best peach pie he’d ever tasted.

“See that fellow Roxanna’s talking to?” Emaline poked him in the ribs.

Booker pried his gaze from Roxanna to study the man sitting alone at a table. His bald head shone under the chandelier like a polished honeydew melon. He wore a tan safari shirt, khaki trousers, scuffed leather boots, a day’s stubble around his jaw, and the expression of a lovesick llama.

Maybe the real term was “lust sick.” The inn’s enchanting owner had a sensuality that could turn the most dignified of men into rutting satyrs. Booker straightened self-consciously and schooled his own features into a semblance of intelligent life.

“That’s Gary Spiner,” Emaline said. “Chuck Fowler’s partner.”

Booker wished she’d lower her voice. The small dining room was already abuzz with speculation about Fowler’s death. “I thought you said Chuck worked as a manufacturer’s rep.”

“He had his fingers in more money pies around this town than you could count, including the local sporting goods store—”

“The Gilded Trout?” On one of his early trips to Masonville, Booker had photographed the sign, a ten-foot fish with golden fins.

“Gary inherited the store from his dad. The way I heard it, Gary’s not much of a businessman—Venus in Pisces spending habits. He had a tough go of it a few years back. Chuck offered to buy in but wouldn’t take less than fifty percent ownership. When Gary came close to losing the whole thing and finally accepted the offer, Chuck put up the money to expand the store’s inventory and start a catalog business.”

Booker hadn’t much faith in partnerships. Like marriages, they often ended rudely. “How’d they get along?”

“Shaky, until the business started making money. Gary manages the retail store and fills mail orders. Chuck stopped in every weekend to run his eagle eye over the accounts.”

“Is Spiner married?”

“His wife left two weeks ago with both kids.”

Partnerships could be tough on the best of marriages. “Any hint of infidelity?”

Emaline squinted at Booker. “You think Gary killed Chuck for fooling around with his wife?”

Half a dozen nearby heads turned.

“Shhhhh! Emaline, would you mind not shouting? I figure it was an accident, somebody out target shooting. Plain and simple.”

“The sheriff doesn’t think so.”

“Maybe that’s because a murder would be more exciting to investigate.”

“Only a simpleminded fool would practice near Turtle Lake, where people could get hurt, when right there at the Caribou Lodge is the best archery range anyone could want.”

“At the Lodge?” Booker had seen the tennis courts and the Texas-shaped swimming pool. He’d supped at the restaurant, bent his elbow in the private club, the only place nearby that served alcohol, but he hadn’t noticed an archery range.

“You probably mistook it for an outdoor theater. That’s what it used to be. Nobody but Jeremy Fowler was interested in keeping a drama company going, so Pete Littlehawk ripped out all the seats and set up the targets.”

Pete Littlehawk, who managed the Lodge, claimed to be half Choctaw and half Blackfoot. Booker wondered if that fact held any significance, considering the instrument used in Fowler’s death.

“I’m surprised archery is such a popular sport,” he muttered.

“The sport’s bow-hunting, Booker. Some hunters think the bigger challenge evens out the odds between them and Bambi’s pa.”

He didn’t like the way this picture was shaping up. He wanted Fowler’s death to be an accident.

“I’ve seen more deer in the brush back of Turtle Lake than anywhere else on the Estates,” he insisted. “Maybe a hunter missed his game shot, and Fowler happened to be in the wrong place.”

“A poacher? Bow season starts in October. Murdering season, though, I guess that’s whenever a killer feels the urge.”

Booker winced, but only a couple of heads turned that time.

Emaline’s stubborn gaze darted toward a table near the front door. “There’s the sheriff and his wife. Wonder if he’s learned anything.”

In a flash she rose from her chair and plopped herself, uninvited, at the Sheriff’s table. After a moment of conversation, Ringhoffer tipped his tea glass at Booker. Cora Lee, a fleshy, dimpled blonde with huge brown eyes, smiled and cocked one eyebrow quizzically at him. Booker wondered why Emaline’s triple-decibel voice had dampened and what she’d told them. On the other hand, what he really wanted was to be excluded from any talk about murder.

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Paradise Cursed Snippet 7

CHAPTER 6

That evening in the dinner room, Ayanna could not help but feel exhilarated at her fortunate timing. Five minutes later and Captain McKinsey would have offered the job to Jase Graham. Cooyah! One piece done, and soon you dressback dis trouble, you. She felt sure, yeah.

Wearing white pants, now, with a blue shirt to match the Sarah Jane’s trim, she prepared to assume the double-job her captain had assigned. Every sailor has to fill in where needed, he had told her. First and most important, take excellent care of our guests.

“Ow yuh do?” Ayanna extended her hands to greet the pair entering the room, as different as a toucan and a dove. The young one, with her spiky strawberry hair, wore green batik, showy like the hair color. The older one, the dove, wore gauzy white cotton beneath a mass of springy dark curls.

Their warm hands nestled softly in her own—until the dove jerked hers away. During the contact, Ayanna felt the dove’s thoughts slide over her own like oil. Flashing a smile, she pretended not to notice, but wondered if the dove might be obeah and see inside to the Bokor’s curse Ayanna was carrying.

“Coodeh, da ting I love about dining on da Sarah Jane,” she said, laying on her thick patois, which tourists ate up like candy, “is hevery tebble has a niceee view. Yuh da bess frens, yeah?”

“Sisters,” said the toucan. “I’m Dayna Kohl, this is Erin, and you have the most amazing job! Has Captain McKinsey mentioned me? He said there might be a place for me among the crew.”

The dove scooted into a booth, her eyes wide, her arms and hands tucked straight down, as if to avoid Ayanna’s touch. If she was obeah, her magic must be puny for her to look so trepid. When they were both seated, Ayanna handed each woman a menu and filled their glasses, wine for the dove, fizzy punch for the toucan.

“I ’elp yuh mek up yuh mind, yeah? Swimps, fish, chawklit cake, all good flayvah. Stek is also good, but not so tender. I come bawk inna bit.”

The chubby lady with bells on her ears requested to sit at Captain McKinsey’s table, and he surprised Ayanna by agreeing. It was rumored he kept himself aloof from the crew and passengers, but he knew how to turn on the charm when it suited, rising and taking the woman’s two plump hands in his own, thanking her warmly for joining him. As charming as he was handsome, this captain.

Ayanna waved over a steward to bring wine. She seated another couple before returning to the toucan and dove.

When the woman called Erin returned the paper menu, her hands all over it, Ayanna felt the thrum of a strange energy in the paper. This woman definitely was witchy, yeah, maybe obeah or maybe some sapless American magic that would do Ayanna no good. But if she was wrong about McKinsey, if he would not or could not help, an American dove with puny magic might be her only salvation.

“Do you find that woman creepy?” Erin whispered when Ayanna had taken their order and gone.

“If tall, black, and dazzling is creepy, sure. Put Ayanna’s image on a travel poster and the Caribbean Isles would be flooded with hot-blooded, tongue-dragging men. How can we hope to entice a sailor to look at us with her aboard?”

Erin rolled her eyes, but at least she’d come out of her weird funk. Sort of.

Dayna hadn’t missed Erin’s grimace when Ayanna touched her hand, as if a goose had walked over her grave. Did the first mate’s exotic beauty remind her of the “best friend” who thought it was cool to sleep with a bride’s fiancé? Or was it that Erin hated everything about this ship? Watching her sister scan the menu with the same grim distraction she’d shown earlier with the steward, Dayna almost wished she’d agreed to stay at the resort. But only almost.

“Erin, lighten up! You are no longer engaged, and we have six days to do all the things we wouldn’t think of doing at home on the Texas range.” Grinning, Dayna nodded toward a sailor making his way around the tables, stopping to talk with each passenger. “We can start with that choice hunk of manhood.”

Blond and built, he had a lazy stride that radiated confidence.

“Second Mate Jase Graham,” Dayna added. “I heard him telling another passenger when we came in.”

Erin shook her head. “Too bold, too schmaltzy. Do you memorize all the sailors’ names, or only the sexy ones?”

“His smile could melt ice, sis. Look at him! I’ll take Jase, you can have Captain Moody McKinsey. You’re perfect for each other, beautiful, brooding, and mysterious.” Dayna had tried several times to catch the captain’s eye after their first meeting, but he was like quick silver, warmly mingling among passengers one second, silently vanishing the next.

Erin turned her gaze to the captain’s table. Even from here Dayna could hear his resonant voice and his low, easy laugh, a ripple of sound that seemed to bounce along like the gentle waves rocking the ship. He sat with Ola and a middle-aged couple. Ola’s bracelet twinkled in the candlelight as she talked with her busy hands. Tonight she wore matching earrings, a cluster of tiny, glittering gold bells.

“The captain looks cheerful enough,” Erin said. “I don’t find him at all gloomy.”

His smile tonight, Dayna had to admit, was much more appealing than the serious mug he wore when he thought no one was noticing. “Maybe he’s a chubby chaser.”

“Dayna Alice Kohl! The whole world does not revolve around sex.”

“This week it does. I’m seventeen, still a virgin, and hopelessly in heat. You’re on the rebound and ripe for vengeance sex. Hair of the dog—best cure for hangovers and fickle fiancés. And if one guy can help you recover, then a dozen guys will do it twelve times faster.”

“You’re sixteen,” Erin corrected.

Jase Graham took that moment to stop at their table and introduce himself. Dayna watched his gaze move from her to Erin, where his dazzling smile oddly froze. He mumbled a few encouraging words about scuba diving excursions, but when a steward arrived with two hot plates, the second mate gave her a quick wink and was gone. Okay, plenty of other cuties aboard.

For a while, grilled “swimps” and multicolored vegetables took their attention. Then halfway through their meal, Dayna looked up to see her sister studying Jase Graham.

“That man looks familiar,” she said vaguely.

“Oh, sure. Like we travel from dusty Central Texas to this watery tropical paradise, our first time ever, and you think you recognize someone from home? Anyway, he’s mine, remember?”

When Erin didn’t respond and seemed about to drift into one of her fogs, Dayna slid a hand into her pocket.

“It’d be a shame to waste the whole week going after the wrong man,” she said, “Especially when you can pick out the right guy with a flick of the cards.”

What had hurt Erin as much as finding her fiancé with another woman was the fact that she’d predicted it months in advance. Reading tarot cards and astrology charts was Erin’s hobby, but she was much better at it than anyone except Dayna knew, verging on psychic at times.

“I told you, I’m done with all that.” Erin shook her head and frowned. Then her eyes turned solemn. “You are not seriously planning to lose your virginity on this cruise, are you?”

Dayna batted her lashes. “Every sailor I’ve seen is cute as a puppy and looks like he could wrestle a gator with his bare hands.”

“So… gator-wrestling is a turn on?” Erin’s frown deepened. “If you weren’t my brilliant little sister, I’d be worried.”

“My first time off the ranch and on a sailing ship, I want this trip to be memorable, every single minute of it.” For Dayna, being happy actually had nothing to do with men. It meant getting a turn at the helm, hoisting a sail, or even scrubbing the deck. But she also wanted Erin to shake off the memory of being jilted by the jerk.

She took the deck of cards from her pocket and set them on the table. “C’mon, Sis. One reading each, so we’ll know how to make the most of this cruise.”

The blood drained from Erin’s face. “No.”

She could be so stubborn at times. To be fair, predicting the jerk’s tryst wasn’t quite the worst of it. A week before the aborted wedding, Erin had done a reading for a good friend.

The cards predicted danger, and when the friend was seriously injured the next day, Erin had tossed all her cards in the trash.

Determined to jolt her sister out of her melancholy, Dayna pushed their empty plates aside.

“Hair of the dog.” She opened the tarot deck.

Buy the Book right now, because you want to know what happens next.

Here Lies a Wicked Man – Snippet 10

She dashed into the kitchen, rescued the last pan of yeast rolls before they turned black and eyed them critically. Only a few corners had burned. A snip, a scrape, a brush of seasoned butter, and they’d taste as scrumptious as ever. Next, she lined up her orders where she could see them all at a glance: roast beef, broiled trout, roast beef, turkey salad—

She’d never managed an inn before opening this one a few weeks ago. Lord, what had she been thinking? Tonight could go down as her best and worst, the night she blew her shot at entrepreneurship.

Scooping tomatoes onto a plate, she splattered her hand then resisted the urge to lick it off.

Didn’t need the health inspector on her case. Meat, potato, vegetables, bread…

Booker Krane popped through the door, Emaline close behind.

“John Lindy’s on his way,” Roxanna said, shoving two filled plates into Booker’s hand. “first table left of the door—that is, if you don’t mind doing more of what you’ve been doing.”

When he grinned and headed out, she gave the next three plates on a tray to Emaline. “Couple beside the front window, with a baby.”

She set four plates on the counter then paused to rub her gold locket for luck. A pinch of determination is worth a pound of try, Aunt Jane had engraved on the back of the gold heart. Maybe tonight would work out, after all. True enough, Roxanna had never managed an inn before, but she’d helped out in her great aunt’s tea room all those years ago.

She scooped potatoes onto all four plates.

Good years they’d been, too, except for the first few months after the accident. She was five years old, riding happily between her parents on the big bench seat of their vintage Oldsmobile. Somewhere ahead two cars crashed. A truck driver carrying half a ton of steel pipe stomped his brakes directly in front of the Olds. Her dad was talking, couldn’t stop fast enough on the slick street, and the pipe sticking off the back of the flatbed truck was suddenly coming through the Oldsmobile’s windshield. Roxanna could still hear the screech of metal, the crunch of breaking glass. Could smell the hot, sticky liquid that gushed over her. She remembered screaming and screaming and finally being pulled from the car, drenched in her parents’ blood.

“You wouldn’t talk or smile,” Aunt Jane told her later. “Lord knows, you had little enough to smile about. Then one day I was sorting through some photographs. I came across a snapshot of you and your folks the day we all went to Disneyland.

“Just a slip of a thing you were, thin as a pencil, sitting on my lap. You took the picture from my hand and, with a timid finger, gently touched the faces. ‘Mommy. Daddy,’ you whispered. ‘Gone.’

“The first tears you’d cried since the accident slid down your cheeks. Then came the flood. I rocked you all night while you got the crying done.”

Roxanna slid two filled dinner plates onto another tray. The locket and all its memories she dropped inside the neckline of her dress to keep it out of the pots as she bent over the wide commercial stove. Aunt Jane’s help would sure be welcome right now.

Twenty minutes later, with Booker and Emaline passing plates as fast as Roxanna could dish them up, the crisis was over. Food levels had run dangerously low. A few items disappeared entirely.

“Everyone seems happy,” Booker Krane told her, carrying out the last plate. “Oh, and two new tables are seated.”

Roxanna dampened a rough kitchen towel with a splash of ice water and pressed it to her neck. What would she have done without Booker and Emaline? If this happened again, she’d need to consider hiring someone to help out on Fridays—which meant paying someone.

Smoothing her hair, she stepped into the dining room to take the two new orders. Her smile slipped when she saw Gary Spiner, who owned the sporting goods store. Gary had been showing up more and more often since his wife left, usually timing his visits near closing to be the last person in the dining room when Roxanna locked up, and hinting thathe could solve her money problems.

“What money problems?” she’d said once. But bad news travels fast in a small town. Gary was active with the local merchants’ association. He probably knew she had a stack of overdue bills in her office. Judging by the fancy new house he’d built overlooking the town, she supposed he had money to back up his offer.

“Freedom has a price tag,” Aunt Jane was fond of saying. It had cost Roxanna every penny she’d tucked away for the past ten years to become an independent business owner.

Allowing anyone to buy a piece of the inn would put a finish to her freedom. If the price tag for independence was longer hours and harder work, so be it. She’d never been afraid of hard work. And if tonight’s crowd was an indication of business to come, the inn just might make it, providing she could stave off the bill collectors a few more weeks. And providing she stayed focused. No distractions. No diversions. No extravagances. No men.

Feeling hot, tired, yet suddenly happy, she surveyed the dining area. Contented chatter floated around the room. Masonville had finally noticed the new inn in town.

When John Lindy arrived, Roxanna introduced him to Booker Krane then sent him on his flight to Dallas with take-out finger foods and a promise of pie and coffee later.

“Here,” she whispered to Booker, handing him a pair of plates heaped with roast beef and vegetables. “Yours and Emaline’s are on the house. Without your help, a lot of people would’ve walked out hungry.”

Making her rounds to take dessert orders and chat with customers, Roxanna began to relax. This was the easy part. Making friends was one of her strengths, one of the reasons she’d chosen this business when she quit the old life and moved away from the city. She only hoped the folks of Masonville would continue patronizing the inn after they inevitably discovered how she’d earned her living in the past.

Buy the Book now, because you’ll want to read what happens next…

She dashed into the kitchen, rescued the last pan of yeas...

She dashed into the kitchen, rescued the last pan of yeast rolls before they turned black and eyed them critically. Only a few corners had burned. A snip, a scrape, a brush of seasoned butter, and they’d taste as scrumptious as ever. Next, she lined up her orders where she could see them all at a glance: roast beef, broiled trout, roast beef, turkey salad—

She’d never managed an inn before opening this one a few weeks ago. Lord, what had she been thinking? Tonight could go down as her best and worst, the night she blew her shot at entrepreneurship.

Scooping tomatoes onto a plate, she splattered her hand then resisted the urge to lick it off. Didn’t need the health inspector on her case. Meat, potato, vegetables, bread…

Booker Krane popped through the door, Emaline close behind.

“John Lindy’s on his way,” Roxanna said, shoving two filled plates into Booker’s hand. “first table left of the door—that is, if you don’t mind doing more of what you’ve been doing.”

When he grinned and headed out, she gave the next three plates on a tray to Emaline. “Couple beside the front window, with a baby.”

She set four plates on the counter then paused to rub her gold locket for luck. A pinch of determination is worth a pound of try, Aunt Jane had engraved on the back of the gold heart. Maybe tonight would work out, after all. True enough, Roxanna had never managed an inn before, but she’d helped out in her great aunt’s tea room all those years ago.

She scooped potatoes onto all four plates.

Good years they’d been, too, except for the first few months after the accident. She was five years old, riding happily between her parents on the big bench seat of their vintage Oldsmobile. Somewhere ahead two cars crashed. A truck driver carrying half a ton of steel pipe stomped his brakes directly in front of the Olds. Her dad was talking, couldn’t stop fast enough on the slick street, and the pipe sticking off the back of the flatbed truck was suddenly coming through the Oldsmobile’s windshield. Roxanna could still hear the screech of metal, the crunch of breaking glass. Could smell the hot, sticky liquid that gushed over her. She remembered screaming and screaming and finally being pulled from the car, drenched in her parents’ blood.

“You wouldn’t talk or smile,” Aunt Jane told her later. “Lord knows, you had little enough to smile about. Then one day I was sorting through some photographs. I came across a snapshot of you and your folks the day we all went to Disneyland.

“Just a slip of a thing you were, thin as a pencil, sitting on my lap. You took the picture from my hand and, with a timid finger, gently touched the faces. ‘Mommy. Daddy,’ you whispered. ‘Gone.’

“The first tears you’d cried since the accident slid down your cheeks. Then came the flood. I rocked you all night while you got the crying done.”

Roxanna slid two filled dinner plates onto another tray. The locket and all its memories she dropped inside the neckline of her dress to keep it out of the pots as she bent over the wide commercial stove. Aunt Jane’s help would sure be welcome right now.

Twenty minutes later, with Booker and Emaline passing plates as fast as Roxanna could dish them up, the crisis was over. Food levels had run dangerously low. A few items disappeared entirely.

“Everyone seems happy,” Booker Krane told her, carrying out the last plate. “Oh, and two new tables are seated.”

Roxanna dampened a rough kitchen towel with a splash of ice water and pressed it to her neck. What would she have done without Booker and Emaline? If this happened again, she’d need to consider hiring someone to help out on Fridays—which meant paying someone.

Smoothing her hair, she stepped into the dining room to take the two new orders. Her smile slipped when she saw Gary Spiner, who owned the sporting goods store. Gary had been showing up more and more often since his wife left, usually timing his visits near closing to be the last person in the dining room when Roxanna locked up, and hinting thathe could solve her money problems.

“What money problems?” she’d said once. But bad news travels fast in a small town. Gary was active with the local merchants’ association. He probably knew she had a stack of overdue bills in her office. Judging by the fancy new house he’d built overlooking the town, she supposed he had money to back up his offer.

“Freedom has a price tag,” Aunt Jane was fond of saying. It had cost Roxanna every penny she’d tucked away for the past ten years to become an independent business owner.

Allowing anyone to buy a piece of the inn would put a finish to her freedom. If the price tag for independence was longer hours and harder work, so be it. She’d never been afraid of hard work. And if tonight’s crowd was an indication of business to come, the inn just might make it, providing she could stave off the bill collectors a few more weeks. And providing she stayed focused. No distractions. No diversions. No extravagances. No men.

Feeling hot, tired, yet suddenly happy, she surveyed the dining area. Contented chatter floated around the room. Masonville had finally noticed the new inn in town.

When John Lindy arrived, Roxanna introduced him to Booker Krane then sent him on his flight to Dallas with take-out finger foods and a promise of pie and coffee later.

“Here,” she whispered to Booker, handing him a pair of plates heaped with roast beef and vegetables. “Yours and Emaline’s are on the house. Without your help, a lot of people would’ve walked out hungry.”

Making her rounds to take dessert orders and chat with customers, Roxanna began to relax. This was the easy part. Making friends was one of her strengths, one of the reasons she’d chosen this business when she quit the old life and moved away from the city. She only hoped the folks of Masonville would continue patronizing the inn after they inevitably discovered how she’d earned her living in the past.

Buy the Book now, because you’ll want to read what happens next…

Words Fascinate Me

So from time to time I’ll share my favorite words, definitions and punnishings.

Here’s another from Ambrose Bierce:

Paradise Cursed – Snippet 6

Stepping aboard the schooner, Dayna took a moment to appreciate that a lifelong dream was about to begin. Okay, no fireworks, no band playing “A Place in This World,” in fact, there was another weirdo band playing something tropical, but she knew that would stop as soon as they sailed. She hoped it would.

She bounced her sneakers lightly on the deck, trying to keep the blazing good feelings from popping right out of her Texas mouth in a “yee-haw.” Then she took note of the true wind. Southeaster, about twelve knots, it whooshed through the rigging, a sweet sound she’d read about and now prided herself on detecting despite the island music blasting the air. A good seaman knew how to read and understand the wind even without an anemometer, and to foretell what the wind would bring. Studying and practicing at home had given her the basics, but this was the real deal. She couldn’t keep her lips from stretching into a silly grin.

A sailor greeted them with fizzy drinks. Not much older than Dayna’s almost-seventeen years, with curly dark hair and deliciously tanned skin, he carried their bags to the cabin. Erin’s two suitcases were filled with all the clothes intended for her aborted honeymoon, even though the brochure indicated that shorts, bare feet and swim suits were allowed everywhere. Dayna’s single backpack held everything she planned to wear. In such perfect weather, who needed clothes?

More important, what were the chances she could swing a job here next summer?

Their cabin, advertised as a Commodore Deluxe with its own porthole, was situated on the main deck and big enough for two if nobody sneezed real hard. It held bunk beds, a chair and a small bureau. The “deluxe” part was a private bathroom scarcely big enough to avoid scraping your knees against the sink on the opposite wall as you sat on the toilet.

Higher up that same wall, the shower head protruded.

Erin’s smile looked permanently molded to her teeth as she thanked the steward. Had it lodged there the instant Ola spoke of pirate ghosts? Her sister’s favorite books featured vampire lovers and zombies, but she got a bad case of the willies when anything spooky happened for real. On the upside, though, she’d snapped pictures during their entire launch ride to the Sarah Jane, which Dayna took as a sign that sis was out of her “poor me” funk and into new blog material.

“Are you all right?” The sailor’s worried frown as he studied Erin suggested he was eager for a “yes” answer.

“I just need to sit down,” Erin said. She perched on the wooden chair, placed her drink on the bureau and continued staring at nothing, yet still smiling as if her muscles had frozen in place for eternity.

Dayna fumbled in her fanny pack for a tip.

“Don’t bother about that. It’s all taken care of at the end.” The sailor tucked Erin’s bags snugly against the foot of the bunks, still looking concerned as he said, “Ma’am, do you feel well enough to come out and join the party? Or would you like me to bring you a plate of food?”

“I’ll sit a minute, then we’ll go out.”

As he swerved his gaze to meet Dayna’s, his face lit up like a puppy’s. “Save a dance for me?”

Dayna smiled and nodded.

“Yes. Of course,” Erin said woodenly, obviously unaware that he was no longer addressing her. “Thank you.”

At moments like this, Dayna couldn’t help feeling as if their sisterly roles were reversed, with Dayna the older and more experienced. Erin’s fear shone in her eyes above the icy stiffness that held her shoulders square and her smile rigid.

“I’m Victor,” the steward said, beaming at Dayna. “If you need anything—”

“We’ll ask for you. You’re great,” Dayna said, scarcely able to shift her gaze from her distraught sister long enough to dismiss Victor with a quick nod.

The moment he left, Erin grabbed her drink and chugged half of it.

“Sis,” Dayna said, “what’s going on with you?”

CHAPTER 5

The wind had come up cool and fresh by the time I claimed the barstool next to Ayanna, and the sun shone with a particular brightness, as if to burn away any shadows where the ship’s ghosts might be lurking. Perhaps her “protection amulet” was at work.

If so, this woman was worth more to me than she could know. At rest in this busy port, the Sarah Jane could hold her own against the unspeakable horrors that wander the sea, but later, at least one passenger, possibly more, would begin to show the dread and nervousness I’d learned to expect. Why my ship attracted souls that were hexed, bewitched or burdened by some other danger, I couldn’t fathom, but there it was.

“Thank you for waiting,” I told her. Then I thanked Burke for keeping her company and asked the young bartender to bring me, “whatever Ayanna is drinking.”

“Ah… sure, Captain. One coffee coming up.” He turned away to manipulate levers on our new coffee contraption and to place a mug beneath the spout.

“Jase is a good sailor,” Ayanna said. “I hope you convinced him to stay.”

Tasting rum in my Jamaican brew, I glanced at the woman’s cup and thought it a bit early for a crew candidate to be drinking hard spirits. But islanders, like sailors, tended to stretch the clock when it suited, and maybe her confidence had needed a boost.

“How do you know Mr. Graham?” I asked.

“Only by reputation, yeah. He has crewed with my brother. We were never formally introduced, but I have seen Jase Graham around.”

Despite the cool breeze, a sheen of perspiration shone at her temple. Was I hiring a boozer? Wouldn’t be the first time, but I’d rather not incur the handicap.

“I could do with a turn around the ship,” I said. “Would you care to join me? We can talk while we walk.”

Smiling at a lively pair of passengers dance-stepping to the music, she slid off the stool. The Rastafarian beat softened and faded, replaced by the sweetly lilting sounds of steel drums. The two bands would trade turns in a dueling playoff, revving the passengers’ enthusiasm while the crew passed around free grog. The Stowaway Party that preceded every cruise offered an opportunity for early arriving passengers to let down their hair a bit and become acquainted.

As we strolled, Ayanna championed her seamanship while I sipped my rum-coffee and tried to ignore the animal sensuality she exuded. Forbidden fruit, I reminded myself.

Protection amulet or not, I needed an able first mate far more than a romantic trifling. So many tempting dalliances presented themselves on these pleasure cruises, I often wondered if time was making an adjustment for my years of pirating, when weeks might pass without a woman in sight. Though my libido remains as youthful as my appearance, I trusted I could savor the visual appeal of Ayanna’s presence on the ship without sampling.

Then she turned to look at me. Sunlight sculpted her features into burnished gold. My resolve faltered and a vision invaded my thoughts— her dusky skin against the crisp white sheets of my bed.

Staunchly, I shifted my gaze out to sea and my thoughts to my rum-laced coffee. Despite its freshness, it reminded me of a taste from the past: the grog I learned to drink as a lad.Rancid water laced with rum to kill its nasty tang along with any lethal bacteria, the grog would send my landlubbers today running to the rail for a good barf.

Rarely did I ponder those bleak years under Stryker’s command. Nor did I often try to make sense of the transformation that began with the searing pain from Stryker’s sword and ended with my waking alone in the silence of the Sarah Jane, the burned out hulk of the Spanish brigantine drifting nearby.

At first I’d thought myself a ghost. There was no sign of the gaping wound I knew Stryker had opened in my belly, nor any evidence of how I had escaped the fire that ravaged the larger ship and left the Sarah Jane untouched. I was hungry, thirsty—surely a ghost wouldn’t experience such bodily needs. Later, after plundering the gold and silver nuggets from the Spaniard’s hold, I anchored off the first port I spied. A tavern-door beggar looked me straight on and lifted his cup. Allowing I must be flesh and blood, sure enough, I tossed a nugget in the cup and laughed when the beggar’s eyes grew large with astonishment.

No doubt, I had experienced a miracle, so I refused to question my good fortune. Months passed before I realized the fortune was also a curse.

Forcing my thoughts now to focus on Ayanna’s verbal resume, I soon acknowledged her litany of qualifications had put at ease any doubts about signing her on. She knew it all, every sheet and pulley of a four-master as well as every shallow and inlet around the islands.

Nevertheless, something about Ayanna was as off as turned milk.

When we paused at the rail to watch arriving passengers climb the gangway, I said, “What I can’t get a handle on is why you’re here and not still on the Poly. Or the Eclipse.”

She looked away, glancing to the right, and I knew she was about to lie. Several lifetimes of reading people had taught me to be wary. Then she surprised me.

“I need you and your ship as much as you need me,” she said, bringing her gaze back around level and straight. “I have spoken with people who sailed on your cruises, yeah. They say an angel rides the Sarah Jane, an angel who—”

“Ridiculous!”

“Some say a devil, yeah.” She shrugged, and the richly tricolored fabric rippled over her body before remolding itself to her curves. “Either way, you are short an able seamen, and I will be making a better sailor than any you find out there.”

I followed her gaze to the launch headed toward us, this time bringing three scrawny boys. They looked young and green, exactly like a dozen other lads I’d turned away.

Buy the Book Now, because you’ll want to read what happens next.

Paradise Cursed – Snippet 5

CHAPTER 3

Jase Graham’s toothy smile was doing its best to appear friendly rather than smug, and perhaps it was just a change in the light streaming through the window glass that gave his eyes a hint of meanness. Nothing can divide a crew so swiftly as meanness. It spreads like a drug.

My hand balled into a fist. Then the light changed. His smile was only a smile, eyes twinkling with humor. I rapped my knuckles on the table to cover my temper spike.

“Okay then, sailor,” I said. “Tell me what you have in mind for crew retention.”

Before he could answer, a movement in the doorway caught my eye. I looked up to find a woman there. A passenger would have been routed to the upper-deck bar for afternoon swizzlers. A glance at Burke, wondering why he’d scheduled two applicants in quick succession, found him frowning at his chart. Apparently, the woman was a surprise to him, as well.

Captivating, nearly six feet tall, she might have been sculpted from bronze and polished by hand to the radiance of black pearl, her facial features more exotic than beautiful. I couldn’t stop looking at them, although the rest of her was equally mesmerizing.

“I will take the job,” she said, in the low-pitched lilt of an islander with African-English heritage. “I crewed on the Polynesia for three years, on the Solar Eclipse for two years, yeah.

And I am not afraid of any curse.”

Through the open door to the dining room, “One Love,” Bob Marley reggae style, filtered from the sun deck while I attempted to steady my breath without taking my gaze from the amazing woman who’d just stolen it. Not only was she gorgeous, Ayanna had uttered the magic words.

“A woman as first mate?” Jason Graham chuckled. “Captain, what crew would go for that? Besides, I never said I wouldn’t take the job.”

“I’d go for it,” Burke panted, smoothing his thinning brown hair.

“Pardon me, Jase.” I rose to guide the unexpected but entirely welcome applicant out to the bar to wait until I finished interviewing her competitor. Her handshake, cool and firm, proved as confident as her words.

As we walked, she said, “I began crewing for my father when I was ten. If you require references, ask any person on da island.”

She slid onto a stool. I waved the bartender over.

“Ayanna, your qualifications sound intriguing. While I finish up inside, would you care for a drink?”

“I have time, yes.” She fingered a gold charm that hung on a chain around her neck. “I also have an extra protection amulet if Mr. Graham is truly worried.”

The way she said the name made me frown as I returned to the dining room.

“You and Ayanna know each other?” I asked Graham.

He flashed the smile I was finding more and more irritating. “I’ve not had the pleasure, but I look forward to correcting that.”

“On your own time, sailor. If you crew the Sarah Jane, you’ll be chatting up our female passengers, not your fellow seamen.” To the new quartermaster, I said, “Burke, would you visit with Ayanna for a bit?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” He was out of his chair faster than I’d ever seen him move, his manifest abandoned on the table.

I watched him leave, then turned my attention back to Jason Graham, hoping the arrival of competition had kicked a bit of wind out of the self-satisfied bloke. Despite his rather grating arrogance, he had useful qualifications.

Ayanna also had potential. With only eighteen hours to fill out the crew, I needed both sailors. Unfortunately, there was only one position as first mate.

CHAPTER 4

Dayna wished Erin would stop letting people go ahead of them to take their turn in the ship’s noisy, stinky dinghy. They were still in line, and Erin was rethinking the cruise again, ready to jump ship before they’d even boarded.

On Lake Palo Pinto, near their hometown in Central Texas, Dayna had poled a home-made raft along the shore when she was ten, jockeyed a jet ski at twelve, and had taken the wheel of her uncle’s speed boat more often than he knew. During a vacation to Galveston, she’d toured the tall ship Elyssa and fell spellbound to the notion of sailing around the world, an ambition her father considered a pipedream.

“Why should we spend a week crowded on a creaky old boat?” Erin grumbled, her back turned to Dayna and the launch as she snapped pictures of the shore. “There’s plenty to do right here in Jamaica.”

“Like what? Lay around the resort with all the newlyweds and soon-to-weds? Sis, you need a vacation away from all that. Anyway, this cruise is going to be fun. And it’s free.”

Erin had won it as part of an online “Jamaica Honeymoon” contest the very day she broke up with her fiancé. She tossed the cruise packet in the trash, but Dayna, spotting the Sarah Jane’s sails on the illustrated envelope, snatched the brochure and read the cruise line’s promise, “seafaring traditions of yesteryear.” She coaxed and badgered until Erin agreed to go—and take Dayna along. All the way to the airport, Erin had tried to renege, and after a night in the plush but boring Montego Bay Resort, she’d became teary-eyed, moping, ready to hop a plane back to Texas.

“Ship-bound for six days?” Erin aimed the camera at Dayna. “What’s there to do?”

Dayna rolled her eyes.

A lady in the launch line next to them, touched Erin’s arm. “Hon, you’re gonna love it.”

Her round brown face dimpled around a big smile.

“So you’ve done this cruise before?” Erin sounded skeptical.

“Oh, my. I’m an old salt.” As the lady raised a hand to her sizable breast, a bracelet of tiny gold bells tinkled. “This is my fifth cruise on a tall ship. I enjoyed every minute of all four.”

Yes! If an “old salt” had chosen the Sarah Jane, Erin might finally be convinced.

Usually, Dayna was no quicker than Erin to trust anything that seemed too good to be true. Erin couldn’t recall even entering the contest. But Dayna had resisted the worm of doubt that niggled at her brain and harangued Erin until she finally agreed to go. If hidden strings did materialize and yank them off to some third-world slave camp, Erin would gleefully commit sister-cide.

“So maybe you can tell us where we’ll be sailing to,” Erin said. “We requested an itinerary, but it never came.”

“Mine didn’t, either, dear. I’m Ola, by the way. Married five times, divorced three, widowed by two, mother of four and determined to live it up before I start babysittinggrandbabies. Hon, you look a lot like my oldest daughter. Except for your pale skin, of course.”

Erin introduced herself and Dayna.

“This is our first cruise,” she admitted. Do you think there’s really enough room for eighty passengers? That’s at least forty staterooms.”

Ola laughed. “Staterooms? Sweetie, you been watching too many Love Boat reruns. You gonna have just enough room to stand beside your bunk and pull a swimsuit over that skinny little butt. Nobody wastes time in their cabin, anyhow, except to snooze.”

Uh-oh. The only thing Erin had hoped to do was take photographs for her travel blog, pig out on chocolate and lie around the cabin reading a mystery novel.

“What about the food?” Dayna said. If it included chocolate, Erin might fold.

“Three square meals plus afternoon swizzlers and snacks.” Ola stepped forward, next in line to board a launch. “If you get hungry in between, sweet-talking the cook usually works.”

From a distance, the ship appeared to be everything the brochure promised, and the water was like liquid jewels. Dayna’s tiny doubt stopped niggling.

“Do you think they’ll have snorkel equipment aboard?” she asked as Ola was boarding the launch.

“No. But you can rent scuba and snorkel gear on any island.”

The woman’s cheeks dimpled, and the friendly banter must have worked a bit of island magic, because this time Erin took the hand of the smiling Jamaican man ready to help her down from the pier and into the next launch. Their tagged luggage, except for Erin’s yellow carry-on, would arrive later.

As Dayna stepped into the boat, Ola added, “Rent your gear on any island inhabited by people, that is.”

Erin stood abruptly and turned to gape at her, causing the boat to list. “Why would we go to an island that’s not inhabited? And what else would be there but people?”

“Hon, that’s why I chose the Sarah Jane for my fifth cruise,” Ola said. “We gonna plant our feet on clean white sand that doesn’t have a footprint in sight. Except maybe the ghost-prints of dead pirates.”

Buy the Book Now, because you’ll want to read what happens next.