Story Excerpts

The pontoons bounced on the placid water of the cove and I taxied the seaplane into a practiced spin against Dr. Feldon’s deck, then tied off quick so I could get inside, and while I’ll admit I wasn’t as observant as I might’ve been in my bladder-induced haste, I can attest to one thing: There was not a dead man on the floor of the cargo cabin when I left the plane.

Yet.

When I emerged relieved from her bathroom, I saw her walking out onto the dock with a bottle and a bowl holding an ice block, and I followed her out. We had an arrangement, the doctor and I.

Oh, nothing romantic, don’t get me wrong. A lovely woman, and as kindhearted as they come, but Dr. Feldon would be old enough to be my mother, had my mother spent her postwar years not caring for me and my siblings, but instead tussling her way through the male-dominated medical schools of the day.

No, our arrangement revolved around the plane I’d just tied out there, a 1969 Cessna TU206G Skywagon outfitted with floats for water landings. It’s unlikely she’d picked it up new, and a crate of that vintage ages less like wine and more like milk. One that lives on seawater even more so.

My part of the deal is to scrape off the odd barnacle, keep it in tune, make sure it’s ready when the good doctor goes off on her island-hops of mercy, delivering pro bono checkups and medical ministration to residents of the nearest islands. I’ll humbly submit that it’s in dandy condition for a barge almost old enough to vote. I have seen younger aircraft sold for scrap.

In return, Dr. Feldon ignores my now and again use of the Cessna for my own reasons, oft involving a quick excursion to the mainland and back with a load that’s not strictly legal.

This island’s governing body bars the entry of pets, and so tourists with more love for their lapdog than frugality must bring them over through unconventional channels. A quick skip across the blue Carib, then back again at holiday’s end; such is the life of the local dog-smuggler.

Not an extravagant income, true, but my needs run to the simple.

The imported whiskey is more of a friendly sunset ritual between the two of us than payment. A nice end to the day.

“Any problems at the marina?” she asked. I settled into the Adirondack chair next to hers, a continent away from the actual Adirondacks, and she handed me a heavy-gauge blue enamel mug. Not elegant, but the sort of thing a savvy tippler in the hurricane latitudes might keep instead of leaded crystal.

I sniffed deep, as if I knew what high-quality whiskey might smell like, gave it a taste, then cracked a shard off the ice block with the heavy pick next to the bottle, as I always do. Probably not what a true whiskey connoisseur would condone, but my palate is hardly sophisticated.

“Not a bit of it,” I told her. “The boys got it lubed and tanked and topped off. Should be good for your jaunts tomorrow.”

“And my supplies? Were they ready?”

I told her that the medical delivery had been waiting in the marina office, and I’d toted it into the cabin of the plane. It took two trips and a borrowed hand-dolly. Must be vaccination season for the kids on the nearby islands.

She nodded her approval, then opened a box she had on the table between us. “Cubanos,” she said, and pulled one out, ran it under her nose. “Gift from one of our neighbors.”

Neighbors was her word for the people she flew around to help. And while it’s true I used the term pro bono to describe her work, gratuities are always appreciated. It’s a fool who would turn down fine cigars.

Dr. Feldon is no fool, and while the jury has yet to return with a verdict on me, I also took one. We went about the ritual of trimming off ends and getting the tips glowing just right with the candle inside the hurricane lamp, and then we eased back to enjoy the smoke in the dwindling light.

“Going to be a good night,” I told her, smiling at the tastes.

“Be better if the view wasn’t blocked.” She was right, the plane remained moored at the end of the dock, right where I’d left it. 

Now, while an experienced pilot of my size and weight could push away from that point sufficient to find room for a take-off, it would prove a challenge for the slighter Dr. Feldon. That’s why I regularly backed it into the slip. “I was in a bit of a rush,” I told her.

“I noticed,” she said through a tobacco cloud. “And I appreciate you not just dangling it over the water.”

“I’m not an animal,” I assured her. Plus, she’d previously censured me for relieving myself at the end of her dock. She enjoys a morning swim.

It’s her plane, so I interrupted my relaxation to attach the pulley system I’d built to tug the tail into the slip at the side of the dock. It was the work of a few moments, but it was not without exertion. Dr. Feldon offered assistance in the form of encouraging nods from her position of comfort.

Once I got it squared away and snugged, I figured I’d best enter the cockpit and ascertain that all gear was turned off and not draining battery. I’d leave the crates of medicines where I’d stowed them in the cabin, seeing as she’d have necessity of them the next day. Also I didn’t want to lift them again.

When I stepped through the door, the same big clamshell-hatch I’d exited moments prior, my foot hit something bulky on the floor of the cabin. I went down hard on my knees and elbows, and I fear I may have expressed a mild oath or two.

Dr. Feldon said, almost with concern, “Charles?” Then she picked up the hurricane lamp and brought it over and I was able to make out my surroundings in the dim light.

And it was at that moment when I encountered the body in the cabin of the plane.

A dead one.

 

“It is a dead one, right?”

I was back on the Adirondack chair, but hardly relaxing. I’d already quaffed the balance of my whiskey as a palliative, but left the cigar to smolder. Now was no time for stimulants.

Instead, I pressed a fist-sized chunk of her ice over the point of my knee where it had been dimpled against an exposed rivet head on the floor of the Cessna’s cabin. A fellow who gets about the island on a bicycle can ill afford a swollen knee.

Dr. Feldon was leaning into the cabin. She’d gone inside her home for a flashlight, thoughtfully allowing me time to regain my equanimity. I suspect I had not comported myself as a perfect gentleman, scrabbling as I did over the body and out of the cabin, yelping like I was nipped by a crab. I am not so accustomed to stumbling over the recently departed as might be a veteran medical professional. “He’s dead, all right.”

I stood, flexing the joint. “What is it you think did him?”

“Hard to say.” She pulled back and up onto her feet outside the plane. “There’s blood.”

“Blood? On the floor?” I limped closer, but not too close. “I walk around barefoot in there.”

“Hardly the first time, Charles.” She looked around at me, eyes tilted over the glasses she’d put on prior to examination. “I often transport the injured for care after I get them stabilized.” She shifted her gaze down to my feet; unshod, as it happened. “I hose it out,” she assured me, and turned back to the cooling corpus.

I managed to get even closer. “Where’s he leaking from?” I peeked past her into the cabin, but I couldn’t see much. The back of a dark head, a once-white, now stained jumpsuit. Stains looked to be grime and oil, mostly, but not blood.

“Can’t say without rolling him over,” she said, “and I shouldn’t do that before the police get here.”

I about jumped again. “Now, there’s no need to involve him, is there?”

She shook her head, not letting me see her expression, but I could read her exasperation. “What else are we going to do, Charles? There’s a dead man here.”

I heard the automobile engine on the other side of the house, and tires crunched the seashell driveway. “Hellfire,” I muttered. I heard his stomps on the deck a moment later.

Captain Vincent St. Vincent, the island’s law. He kept a few deputies back at the station, but they were just sizable local kids he’d pinned with badges. It was the captain who was the real lawman, and he took his job right serious. He did not, as a rule, abide my tomfoolery.

He wore his trim white uniform, the one with braid on the shoulders, and the snappy pith helmet. I’d never seen him wrinkled, sweaty, or even unbuttoned. He can move smooth and stealthy, slick as olive oil on a marble floor, and he can charge in like a rhinoceros. That last tends to be when he’s making his official presence known. This was one of those times.

Not a large man, the captain, but he brushed me aside like a beaded curtain and went to Dr. Feldon’s side at the cabin.

“Who is it?” He wasn’t entering with any pretense of sympathy, but that’s the rhinoceros thing again.

“We don’t know,” she said, and I appreciated her including me amongst the ignorant. “He just turned up here.”

The captain bent down for a look. “How did he get here?”

“That also we don’t know,” she told him. “Charles just opened the door and there he was.”

I heard him cluck his disapproval. Not one to welcome a challenge, our captain. “Then how did this aircraft arrive here?”

“Charles flew it in not long ago. He got it checked out for me on the mainland.”

Captain St. Vincent straightened at that, and for the first time acknowledged me. He raised one of his perfect eyebrows, just a shade darker than the skin behind them, each an echo of his tidy black mustache.

He didn’t ask, but it was a question, so I nodded. “It’s true. I flew her in and didn’t leave her more than a minute or two.” I neglected to confide in him as to my reason for the momentary abandonment. “When I got back, this is what I found.”

The captain turned back to the plane, hunkered down, and with a stronger heft that I’d have anticipated from one of his size, he rolled the body over. Then he stood up and stepped back so we could all see.

There was a hole in the front of the dead man, long and jagged and large enough that calling him the dead man seemed a redundancy. The stained coveralls that had been hidden under him were even more stained, black-red dark, and the color in his face had paled in response.

“Hmph,” Captain St. Vincent said.

Dr. Feldon didn’t say anything.

What I said was, “Know what we got here? This, I believe, is your basic locked room mystery.” There’d been a tall stack of used mystery magazines donated by the USO at the airbase where I served at Long Binh Post, many years and the other side of the planet ago, and I bet I read each of them twice. Tweedy fops with monocles poring over prison cells and bank vaults with surprise corpses in them. I was looking forward to sniffing out clues as Captain St. Vincent’s perspicacious amateur detective sidekick. “It is a poser, is it not?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Captain St. Vincent said, “Charlie Ash, I arrest you on suspicion of murder.”

I retracted my unspoken offer of assistance