Chapter 6

 

After topping off the fuel tanks and clearing customs, we were pounding a smooth ocean surface on our way towards Nassau. Although most of Steve’s work as an engineer involved working on large diesel engines, he was familiar with the twin pack of power the boat harbored below deck. When I suggested that he handle the controls for a while, he smiled like a kid being offered the cookie jar.

The whole time he was at the controls he kept expressing his enthusiastic appreciation for such a finely designed power boat. From down below deck I could hear Tom encouraging Steve to apply more power to the props.

It didn’t take long for us to get to Nassau. As we entered the harbor we could see the many cruise ships lined up at the docks. Steve suggested we proceed further into the harbor and away from the many commercial endeavors that cramped the immediate entrance of the harbor.

We ended up at a marina that seemed to serve the needs of the local boats. Steve said that he knew the guy that owned the place and that the boat would be safe there. Steve was an amiable type so it didn’t surprise me to see the welcome he got as we walked into the office of the marina.

After securing the boat and clearing customs, we all headed for town. Nassau was the main port of call for Steve’s ship so that explained why he knew so much about it.

The downtown section of Nassau was crowded with tourists. I assumed that most of the people were off the large cruise ships that we had seen on our way into the harbor.

We first stopped at a small bar and had a few beers. Inside the bar I overheard two guys arguing over something. Each was speaking a different language and I don’t think either knew what the other was saying.

After downing a few we headed for one of Steve’s favorite restaurants. Then, after our meal and a few more beers, Steve said that he was going to check on some possible leads on Bruce. He then suggested that Tom and I try out a particular bar that was down by the docks. Before Steve left he asked me for the picture of Bruce that I had brought with me into town. From the picture, it was evident that it had been taken not too long ago. Bruce looked just as he had two weeks earlier.

In the picture, Bruce was standing beside a bright red Porsche. He was dressed as casually as he had been that night I met him. Bruce stood about six feet three inches tall, somewhere around the two hundred pound mark and while, by no means a weight lifter, one who seemed as though he could hold his own.

 I remembered the look on his face that day when he turned to show me that he had been shot in the arm. Despite that and the loss of enough blood to cover the controls that his hands were on, he maintained enough composure to pilot the boat. I found myself hoping that there was some chance he had managed to get away from those that were chasing him that day. Even if it did mean that all that money back in West Palm Beach would be his. The deal with his father would still be good for a cool million.

After Steve left, Tom and I headed for the docks to find the bar. We had agreed to meet Steve there around midnight. If he couldn’t make it back in time it was agreed that we would meet back at the boat. As we walked into the bar it was obvious that this was a pretty popular place for the tourists as well as the local folk.

The place was huge and had large TV screens at either end that were showing popular music videos. With a packed crowd, we had to push our way back to the bar. I had to yell at the bartender just to be heard over the noise of the crowd.

After paying for a couple of beers, I suggested that we try to find a place to sit down near the back and away from most of the noise. Towards the back, the crowd thinned out and we were able to find a table. It had a couple of drinks on it but the seats were empty and we reasoned them to be ours.

“Look!” Tom said as he pointed to the men’s room sign just a few feet away from the table.

“Yeah, great seating choice,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

Inside the men’s room the noise of the crowd subsided enough that I didn’t need to yell to be heard. My thoughts turned to Steve and I was hoping that he would be able to get some kind of a lead on Bruce. If he could, it would save us a whole lot of time trying to befriend someone else that might be able to help. Most people, especially here in the islands, are a little reluctant to associate with people they don’t know and are usually very suspicious of people asking questions.

On my way back to the table I could see that Tom had already made some new friends. Both were in the form of bronze-skinned women, each endowed with enough physical attributes to set nearly any man to make a fool of himself with his attempts of persuasion.

“These ladies claim that we have taken their seats,” Tom informed me.

His offer of the use of his lap didn’t go over too well but my offer to order up another round of drinks as well as find a couple more chairs was enough to persuade them to stick around. I could see that the tables outnumbered the chairs in this place.

With a ‘leave your seat, lose your seat’ attitude, I grabbed two chairs from a couple who decided to take up dancing.

“Here we go,” I said as I slid the chairs up to our table.

Tom introduced the girls as Ava and Evonne and informed me that they both worked on one of the cruise ships that was in the harbor. They had both just recently arrived from Europe and were looking for a little island adventure of their own.

They explained to us that the ship they worked on was cruising from the Bahamas to South America. The hours passed by quickly and Steve still hadn’t returned. I was hoping that it meant that he was onto something but couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous at the same time.

We all decided after waiting an extra hour for Steve that we would head back to the boat. Ava and Evonne were both curious about this boat that Tom had been telling them about and after we assured them of a cab ride back into town later, we headed for the marina.

Back on board, Tom gave our guests the grand tour of the boat. They, like most all before them, were impressed. Who wouldn’t be? You didn’t have to be into boats to appreciate the money and power this boat projected.

Through the course of the conversation the girls mentioned that they had some free time in the next two days before their ship headed south to St. Thomas. Either one of these women could have owned my heart but I was taking a distinct liking to Ava. Perhaps it had something to do with our mutual liking of jazz or the fact that we both enjoyed sailing.

At around three in the morning, I found myself starting to nod off and excused myself, informing all that I was headed for bed. I asked Tom if he could call the cab for Ava and Evonne and then extended to them the use of the two extra side berths below should they want to stay over. With that I headed down below and straight to bed.

I think that part of my reasons for not staying up was due to a little guilt I was feeling about leaving Linda and two days later enjoying the company of another woman. I was wishing that Linda could have been a little more adventurous like Ava. Does man think by brains alone? I thought as I lapsed into sleep.

The next morning I woke to the sounds of someone in the galley and got right up thinking it was Steve. Entering through the doorway, I found Ava making coffee.

“Hey! Good morning,” I said. “I’m glad to see you stuck around.”

“I hope you don’t mind me making coffee,” she said.

“Not a problem,” I said. “Got any extra?”

“I made a whole pot.”

“Have you seen Steve?” I asked.

“Steve?” she asked.

“Yeah, Steve is a friend of ours. He was supposed to meet us last night but never showed up. I was hoping that he’d be by this morning.”

“What time is it?” I heard a voice ask. Turning, I saw Evonne in the port berth that was situated across from the galley.

“Twelve thirty,” Ava replied.

I went up topside and found Tom asleep on the rear deck cushions. After getting him up, I went back down below and had some breakfast with the girls.

“So what are you and Tom doing today?” they wanted to know.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Why?”

Evonne said that they were going parasailing and wanted to know if Tom and I would like to go along. I told them that I wanted to wait around for Steve to get back but after that we were free for the day.

“You could leave Steve a note telling him you’re over on Paradise Island at the beach,” Ava suggested.

“You can’t miss the place,” Evonne added.

“Well, let me check with Tom,” I said.

I went back up topside to find that Tom had fallen back to sleep. Waking him this time, I asked what he thought about the parasailing idea.

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “What about Steve?”

“We can leave him a note telling him where we’re at. I hope nothing went wrong with him asking questions about Bruce,” I added.

“He’s ok,” Tom insisted. “He told me he had a couple of girl friends here and I’d bet that’s where he is.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

“You worry too much,” Tom insisted.

Before heading out, we left word at the marina as well as a note on the boat for Steve suggesting that he come on over to the beach where we would be. It was a quick ride over the bridge to Paradise Island and in no time we were spread out on the beach soaking up the sun.

Ava and Evonne both had pretty well developed tans and mine, from the time spent on the vagabond sailors’ boat two weeks earlier, was enough to hold its own. Tom, on the other hand, was quite the sight. From the neck up he could have passed for someone born and raised in the southern latitudes but, with him standing there in his cutoff jeans, he looked more like a recent transplant from the far north from his neck down to his toes.

We spent that afternoon swimming and parasailing up and down the beach. I halfway expected to see Steve show up but as the sun began to set I started getting anxious to get back to the boat thinking that he would be there waiting for us.

On the way home, Tom was already beginning to feel the effects of too much sun on places that it hadn’t shone on for a while. I was relieved to see Steve sitting up topside on the boat as we made our way down the dock.

“Is that your friend Steve?” Ava asked as we neared the boat.

“Yeah, that’s Steve,” I said.

“Hey, guy, I’m sorry I didn’t leave a key to the boat with your friend at the marina,” I said as we boarded the boat.

“That’s ok,” he said. “I’m just getting back myself. Looks like you guys wasted no time in making new friends,” Steve said as we introduced him to Ava and Evonne.

I explained to him that we had met them the night before at the bar near the docks.

“By the looks of Tom’s feet, I’d say the four of you spent some time at the beach today, right?” he asked.

“We spent most of the time parasailing,” Evonne informed Steve.

When I asked Steve how things went he said pretty well and then asked if I would walk up to the marina with him. As Steve and I headed back up the docks Tom suggested that he and the two girls would see about putting some dinner together.

Before leaving the States, Tom and I had purchased enough food to feed ourselves for a month. We were not sure about being able to find the food we liked here in the Bahamas.

On the way up the dock Steve handed me a portion of a newspaper. Upon opening it up I took notice to a story heading that read:

                   “New York Man Found Dead At Sea”.

 

My first thought was that Bruce was from Florida, not New York. I read on:

 

“Authorities found the body of a New York man today

and have identified him as Kevin Flowers. . .”

 

Damn, I thought to myself, so much for any hopes of him pulling through. The article went on to say that it was believed to have been a drug related incident. Something I found interesting was that the paper said that Kevin was from Rhinebeck, New York. Rhinebeck was a place I was very familiar with. I had grown up about a hundred miles from there but spent many a weekend there at an airdrome where they flew old World War One airplanes in the weekly airshow.

As a kid I grew up around airplanes. My uncle ran the local airport which was only a few miles from our house. It wasn’t much more than a few thousand feet of grass but from there he taught many a person, including myself, to fly airplanes. I actually learned to fly a plane before I could drive a car.

You couldn’t legally be a licensed pilot unless you were eighteen but that never stopped Tom and me from many times pushing one of those little yellow planes out of the hangar and taking off for some illegal flying. Of all those memories from that time in my life the best were of the flights to Rhinebeck with my uncle in one of the little J-3 cubs. It seemed that besides Viet Nam, Kevin also had New York and Rhinebeck in common with me. I wondered if he had been a pilot.

“So what do you think?” Steve asked.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s the guy I was telling you about. Did you find out anything about Bruce?”

“I think so,” he said.

I showed the picture to some people who told me that Bruce has spent time here and that he was hanging around with some French people who live over on Paradise Island.

“Do you have an address?” I asked.

“Sure do,” he said. “Right here.”

“Great,” I said taking the piece of paper with the address on it.

“Anything else?” I inquired.

“Well, that’s all anybody wants to say at this point,” Steve informed me. “A lot of people or most, actually, don’t want to jeopardize themselves by talking too much. Here in these islands one must be careful.”

We agreed that the following morning would be the best time to check out the house of these French people that Bruce had been seen with. I asked Steve if he wanted to hang out and have dinner with us but he told me that he had to get back to the ship to prepare for a trip south.

“South?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. We will be leaving Monday sometime for Guadeloupe.”

“Guadeloupe?” I asked. “Where is that?”

“South about a thousand miles,” he said.

“Do you usually go that far south?” I asked.

“Only when we go into dry dock,” Steve informed me.

He went on to say that every two years or so they would haul the boat out of the water and give it a going over. Being constructed of wood made that pretty much necessary.

“Well, that’s a long way to go, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah, but it actually is cheaper in the long run because labor rates are so low there.”

Steve and I agreed to meet at the boat early the next morning. He took off on his little moped and I headed back to the boat.

Back on board, dinner was ready and as I sat down at the table, I handed Tom the newspaper clipping that I had gotten from Steve. As Tom read the article Evonne inquired as to what it was about.

“About an American they found dead around here,” I told her.

“What did he die of?” she wanted know.

“It seems that somebody shot him,” I said bluntly.

“Hey!” Tom exclaimed. “He was from Rhinebeck.”

“Where is that?” Ava asked.

“Near where we grew up,” Tom told her.

Over dinner Tom and I told Ava and Evonne about our flights down to Rhinebeck when we were kids and how we used to sneak the planes out of the hangar to go flying when my aunt and uncle weren’t around.

When we first met the girls, Tom had told them that my family had money and that the boat belonged to my father. He did this before I could say anything about it and now I found myself having to go along with his deception. It surely wasn’t the first time and I’m sure he did it to impress the girls and it was doing just that.

After hearing some of Tom’s recollections of our younger days, they wondered aloud what it must have been like to grow up with the opportunities of having money.

“It’s not everything,” I said.

“Easy for you to say,” Evonne insisted.

We all were having a great time and I found myself entertaining the idea of getting involved with Ava that night. Before my ideas got too far along though, Evonne reminded Ava that they were due back on board by midnight. It seemed they had to work the next day and started at four that next morning.

“That’s pretty early,” Tom said.

“Yes but we’re done at noon time,” Ava added.

“So, what about tomorrow afternoon?” I asked.

“We’re free any time after twelve,” Ava said.

“Well, then suppose we all meet here around one,” I suggested.

After the girls hopped into the cab, Tom and I returned to the boat. We sat up topside concluding the fact that we were both taking a strong liking to Ava and Evonne.

“So, what did Steve find out about Bruce?” Tom wanted to know.

“Well, it seems that Bruce was seen hanging around with some people that live over on Paradise Island,” I explained.

“Do you know where they live over there?”

“Sure do,” I replied. “Steve and I are going there tomorrow.”

“What about me?” he asked.

“I need you to be here to keep an eye on the boat,” I said. “Besides, someone has got to be here when Ava and Evonne show up.”

“Keep an eye on the boat?” Tom questioned. He could tell that I was putting him off. Earlier Steve and I had decided that it would be best if just two of us went to the house.

“Ok,” Tom said as he shrugged his shoulders.

“Hey, I’m just playing it Steve’s way,” I said in my defense.

“Forget it,” Tom said. “I’ll stay here.”

I left it at that.

The next morning Steve showed up around seven and I told him that I wanted to first go into town and make a couple of phone calls before heading over to Paradise Island. Before leaving, I told Tom that I would meet him and the girls back at the boat around one o’clock.

In town, I put in an overseas phone call to Linda but was unable to reach her. It was Sunday and I figured that in the morning I would stand the best chance of reaching her at home. Next, I tried Bruce’s dad. Bruce’s mom answered and promptly put Mr. Saxton on the phone.

“Hello,” he said. “I was getting a little worried.”

“Well, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten in touch with you until now but getting near a phone has been a problem. Besides that, I don’t have very much that I can tell you. We were able to establish that your son associated with some people who live here in Nassau and we’re on our way now to check into this.”

He asked me how the boat was doing and I informed him that we had no problems with it at all. He advised that I should call Bob or Lee if I needed anything at all for the boat. I assured him that I would and that I would call him the following Tuesday evening to fill him in on our progress. After hanging up, I put another call through to Linda but there was still no answer.

Across the bridge we found the address we were looking for. It was a large house that backed up to the water and had its own private dock. Yeah, this is a place that Bruce could appreciate, I thought to myself. Steve and I had decided that we had nothing to lose by just knocking on the door and if things felt right we could then inquire about Bruce.

After knocking on the door with no results, I suggested that we each work our way around the house and check it out for any windows that might be open or unlocked. Steve made his way all the way around the house to where I was standing.

“Did you find anything?” I asked him.

“I looked through the sliding glass doors in the back of the house and it looks empty,” he replied.

“Empty as in no furniture?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “There’s all that but it looks like no one is home.”

“In that case, I’m going in through this unlocked window,” I informed him.

With Steve’s help I was able to get up and through the window that was six feet off the ground. Once through the window I stuck my head back out and suggested that Steve keep a look out for any trouble. The window that I had come in through was a bathroom window and it appeared that someone did, in fact, live there.

There was a shaving kit on the sink and a towel that had been used recently was hanging over the curtain rod to dry. Just off from the bathroom was a bedroom that I figured to be as good a place as any to start snooping around.

I started going through the bureau drawers with hopes of finding some type of information as to who these people were. The top drawer produced enough stuff of value that it made me question why they would leave a window unlocked.

First, I found a Rolex watch, then a box that contained a couple of gold chains along with some unusual looking and obviously expensive belt buckles. In the next drawer, under a neatly stacked pile of shirts, I found a leather folder. Inside the folder were papers but before I could read though them I took notice to a passport that was also in the folder. Great, I thought. I’ll find out just who these people are.

The passport belonged to an André. It was a French passport and from the port entry stamps it seemed that this guy did a lot of traveling between Nassau and a place called St. Maarten. I wasn’t sure where that was but figured it to be somewhere along the drug trafficking route. Just as I was placing the passport back into the leather folder, I heard a noise from outside and quickly put everything back into the bureau.

After closing the bureau drawers, I quickly made my way back to the bathroom. I first looked out the window only to find Steve nowhere in sight. Great, I thought. The window was high enough off the ground that I had needed Steve’s help getting in but now things didn’t feel right and I was going back out that window - Steve or no Steve. I positioned myself in the window and lowered myself down.

Just as my feet were about to touch the ground, I heard something and turned to investigate. Bam! Out went the lights. The last thing I could remember was the feeling of my head being hammered down like an unsharpened fence post. When I began to regain consciousness it was pitch dark and I realized that I couldn’t open my eyes. When my brain began to function again, I became aware that my head had been tightly wrapped in some fashion which was not allowing me to open my eyes.

Not only that, but my hands were bound behind my back and my legs, too, were bound from the ankles up to a point just above my knees which prevented me from being able to bend my legs. Oh, shit! I thought.

I wondered where I was and for how long I had been unconscious. I couldn’t hear a thing. Just silence and reasoned that I had been left to myself. What about Steve?

I suddenly became aware of the pain in my head from where I had been subjected to the physical abuse by my assailants. I remained fully aware of this pain because my head was pulsing against the tightly wrapped restraint that was around my head. I wondered how I was going to free myself and decided that I better determine where I was and if I had been left alone.

I rolled around half way expecting to roll into Steve but soon realized that I was within the confines of what I believed to be a closet and by myself. I started working my legs back and forth until I was able to bend them at the knees. This enabled me to roll around a little easier but still unable to stand. I kicked off my leather boat shoes and while lying on my back felt the walls with the bottoms of my feet for any indication of a door.

Halfway down the second wall I was able to locate what I thought to be a closet door. Before slamming my feet into the door, I thought of what consequences my action might produce. I wasn’t sure at that point if I was, in fact, all alone or if perhaps my captors were somewhere around.

I was in a somewhat perplexed situation. I could break out of here and they could what, I asked myself, kill me? Or, I could wait here until they got around to killing me.

If these were the same people that killed Kevin that day, they had no qualms about the termination of life. With that thought, I slammed my feet against what I believed to be the door. ‘Feets don’t fail me, now’, I thought. When my feet hit the door they kept going indicating that whatever I hit had moved. Crawling out of my confinement, I quickly determined that it was, in fact, a door and I positioned myself up against the open edge of it.

All the commotion hadn’t drawn any attention so I reasoned that my captors were not around. I rubbed my bound wrists up and down the open edge of the door until I could feel the tape began to loosen a bit. With this encouragement, I quickened the pace until I felt the last bit of my restraint break loose.

With my hands free, I started to work on what it was that was wrapped around my head. I quickly realized that I had been bound by duct tape. It was wrapped so tightly that it was preventing me from opening my eyelids that were actually stuck to the fibers of the tape. So was a lot of my hair. My head was wrapped like a mummy and it took a while for me to get the last bit of tape off of my head. Next were my feet and in short order I was back to standing on them. Once I was free my thoughts turned to the fate of Steve.

I made a quick search of the house and found him bound as I had been in another one of the bedroom closets. With the aid of a knife from the kitchen, Steve’s restraints were off in a matter of minutes.

“You alright?” I asked him as I removed the last piece of tape from around his head. He assured me that other than the lump on his head like mine, he would survive.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I remember hearing the sound of a car door and when I went around the corner of the house this baseball bat was coming down on me.”

“So that’s what it was,” I exclaimed.

“Hey, I’m sorry about getting you into this,” I offered Steve. “I didn’t mean to be getting you beat up.”

“Hey, that’s ok,” he assured me. “What now?”

“What time is it?” I asked.

It was still light out and I assumed it was late afternoon.

“Ten o’clock,” Steve said.

“Ten o’clock?” I asked

“Yeah, as in Monday morning,” he said.

“Damn, talk about a good night’s sleep!” I exclaimed.

“So, now what?” Steve wanted to know.

“Well, we better get the fuck out of here but, before we go, there’s something I want to take with us.”

“What’s that?” Steve wanted to know.

“I’ll show you,” I said. I headed back to the bedroom and pulled open the bureau drawer.

“Damn,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” asked Steve.

“Well, I found a passport here before and I was going to take it with us,” I explained.

“Whose was it?” Steve wanted to know.

“It belonged to an André,” I said.

“Sounds French to me,” Steve said.

“Yeah, it was a French passport,” I told him. “By the way, where is St. Maarten?”

“Why’s that?” Steve asked.

“Well, it seems that this guy does a lot of travelling between here and there,” I informed him. “The passport had his address there.”

“Well, it’s about twelve hundred miles south from here. In fact, it’s only a couple hundred miles north of where I’ll be in a week,” he said.

“You mean Guadeloupe?” I asked

“That’s it,” Steve replied. “Which reminds me, we leave today.”

“Shit, that’s right,” remembering it was now Monday. “Let’s get out of here.”

Before leaving we made a quick sweep of the house. It appeared that our captors had vacated the house and had taken everything but the furniture with them

After leaving the house, Steve and I walked about a mile before flagging down an empty cab which took us back into town. During the cab ride back to town Steve expressed regret that he wouldn’t be able to further assist us with our endeavors.

I told him that he had already done more than I could have expected and that I wanted to pay him something for what he had done. He insisted that a deal was a deal and that the deal was for a ride here to Nassau and to check out any leads on Bruce.

When we got to the docks I noticed that the cruise ship that Ava and Evonne worked on had left port. With all that had happened I hadn’t had time to think about the fact that I was unable to meet Tom and them yesterday.

After dropping Steve off, I had the cab driver deliver me to the marina. I felt bad having to say goodbye to Steve. I was starting to really like the guy. Like Tom and myself, Steve was outspoken and right up front about things. Besides that, he had connections here in these islands that would have been a real asset to us in our attempts at obtaining information.

Getting out of the cab at the marina, I could see Tom on the boat. As I made my way down the pier, he saw me and headed in my direction.

“Where have you been?” he wanted to know. “You were supposed to meet us here yesterday.”

“Well, Steve and I ran into a little trouble,” I told him.

“Yeah, I thought as much,” he said. “When you never showed up yesterday, I started getting worried. You should have left me a copy of that address,” he went on to say.

On board I further explained to Tom everything that had transpired since the time I had left him the day before.

“I knew I should have gone,” he said.

He was probably right. With an extra person, it might very well have turned out differently.

“You know Ava and Evonne are gone.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I took notice to that when I dropped Steve off at his ship. By the way he said to tell you goodbye.”

“Everybody’s leaving us,” Tom said.

“Yeah, it’s just me and you now.”

“So, what now?” he inquired.

“Well, we have to find out who owns that house or who was renting it.”

“So this guy with the French passport,” Tom asked. “Does Steve know anything about him?”

“No, but I know somebody that might,” I replied.

“Yeah, who’s that?” he asked.

“His neighbors,” I told him.

“When do you want to check that out?”

“Right now.”

“Let’s do it then,” he replied.

Less than an hour later, Tom and I were standing in front of the house where Steve and I had such a good night’s sleep.

“What do you think?” Tom asked.

“Well, let’s see if anybody’s home”.

With a Colt .45 in my pocket this time, I had no reservations about pounding on the door. It didn’t surprise me when it went unanswered. I didn’t suspect that they would have returned. I took notice to a couple of elderly women next door and suggested to Tom that we ask them about these people.

“Good day, ladies,” I said as I approached the two women who were seated in a couple of lawn chairs on the back lawn.

“I was wondering if you might be able to help us?” I asked.

“In what way?” they asked.

“Well, I was wondering if you could tell us where we could find the people who live next door.”

“Oh, they come and go a lot,” one of the women told us.

Then the other woman insisted on knowing the reason for our inquiry. I figured that, like most good neighbors, they weren’t about to just give away information about the people who lived next door. I explained that I was looking for a house to buy on the island where I could keep a boat.

“That house isn’t for sale,” the woman said.

“Well, if you could give me the owner’s name, I could at least make them an offer,” I said.

“She doesn’t live there,” the women replied.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She then informed me that the people that were presently living next door only rented the house and that the owner was a woman who lived in Freeport.

“Would you happen to have her address there?” I asked.

“Yes, but I know she won’t sell the house,” the woman insisted.

After getting the address from the woman, I showed her the picture of Bruce and asked if she had ever seen him before.

“Oh, yes,” she said, before realizing that something wasn’t right.

“Hey, what is this?” the woman wanted to know.

She became indignant realizing that we hadn’t been honest about our intentions. She followed us half way back to the road before giving up her verbal abuse over the deception. I didn’t like lying to the woman but under the circumstances, it was a means of acquiring the information we needed.

We had the cab driver wait for us that morning to avoid having to wait for another cab. On the ride back to the marina we decided that a trip to Freeport would have to be our next course of action.

Before handing me the woman’s address, the neighbor had informed me that the owner of the house had no phone and that we would have to go to Freeport if we wanted to speak with her. We reasoned that the owner of the house would know more about these people than anyone else we were likely to run into here in Nassau.

With that in mind, we decided to leave first thing the following morning allowing us the whole day to get there. The next day we headed north towards Freeport. Our objective was to find out from the woman who owned the house, just who her tenants were and where, other than Nassau, they spent their time.

A frontal system had moved into the area during the night and its effects were apparent. It had brought with it low clouds and confused seas which made our trip north very intense. Because of the weather it took a lot longer to reach Freeport than we had anticipated. It wasn’t until late afternoon that we were finally on our way into the harbor.

Along with us were many other boats that seemed to be seeking some shelter from the unusually high seas now building out on the open ocean. We continued into the harbor till we found a place where the effects of the ocean had somewhat subsided.

After finding a place to keep the boat for the night we cleared through customs then found a cab driver who agreed to take us where we wanted to go and wait for us while we were there. The address was on the other side of the island in an exclusive neighborhood. The particular house that we were looking for was situated right on the beach with an unobstructed view of the ocean.

As I was getting out of the cab I took notice to someone on the beach in front of the house and suggested to Tom that we go talk to the person. When we got down to the beach I could see that it was a woman and as we walked closer, I could see some apprehension in the woman’s demeanor. This was to be expected. After all, here were Tom and me looking the way we did and appearing from out of nowhere onto this isolated stretch of beach in front of this woman’ s house.

“Good afternoon!” I yelled out to her over the noise of the surf pounding its way onto the beach.

“Bon jour,” the woman replied, still a little hesitant.

“What did she say?” asked Tom.

“I don’t know but it sounded friendly enough,” I told him.

“Hello,” I said when we got close enough to carry on a conversation.

“I was wondering if you might be able to help us.”

“In what way?” she wanted to know.

“Well, we’re looking for a friend of ours who gave us an address in Nassau and told us that the people living there would be able to help us get in touch with him.”

I went on to tell her that we had been in Nassau for a week and could never find anyone home when we went there. I further explained that the next door neighbor had given us her address here in Freeport thinking that you could suggest where we might find these friends of our friend.

“I don’t think I can be of much help to you,” the woman said. “I haven’t seen André in quite some time”.

“Yes, André. Bruce has mentioned André,” I told her. “Is he the one that’s renting the house?”

“No,” she said. “His parents actually do. They have been back in France though for the past two years and André has been staying in the house since then.”

“Do you know if he ever goes to St. Maarten?” I asked.

“Well, his parents own a home down there, but I wouldn’t know if André ever goes there or not. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of much help,” the woman offered.

“That’s ok,” I assured her. We’ll check one more time in Nassau.”

Before leaving the woman asked us for our names.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m Fred and this here is Barney. If you do happen to see André please tell him that we were asking about him.”

With that we said goodbye and headed back to the cab. Before returning to the boat we stopped in town and tried our hand at some gambling in one of the many casinos that were on the island.

With no luck there either, we returned to the boat. We had decided earlier that we would wait until the following day before leaving. We were hoping that would be enough time for the ocean to settle down after the weather front moved through.