Page 61 of Murder Island
It was almost midnight. I was exhausted. I needed gas. And water.
As I came around the next bend, I saw yellow lights reflecting in the water about fifty yards ahead.
Thank God! I motored straight toward the twinkle.
As I got closer, I saw an aluminum dock projecting out into the lake and a wood-frame building at the top of a steep slope behind it. The building front was draped with yellow bulbs, and there was a neon Kilimanjaro PremiumLager sign in the window. To me, at that moment, it was like coming across a five-star hotel.
As I pulled up to the dock, a small Black girl hopped down a set of wooden steps from the building. Eight years old, if that.
“I need gas,” I said, pointing to my engine, hoping she would understand me and run to fetch her dad.
“Regular or diesel?” she asked. She grabbed the line from my prow and tied it to the pier post with a perfect cleat hitch.
“Regular,” I said. “Thanks.”
The girl walked to a rusted metal shed set back into the bushes and yanked the door open. She hauled out a plastic ten-gallon tank and pushed it downhill to the dock. It probably outweighed her.
“You thirsty?” she asked, standing up again.
I was coated with grime and sweat. I probably reeked. “How’d you guess?”
She pointed toward the building. “You go up. Have a drink. I’ll fill your tank. Pay inside.”
I trusted this girl totally.
I grabbed my cloth sack and climbed the steps toward the bar. As I got closer, I could hear laughing from inside, and music. Ed Sheeran. As soon as I stepped onto the porch, I could smell beer and frying food.
I pulled the screen door open. The whole place was the size of a large living room. Wood floor. Two round tables.Metal fan spinning near the ceiling. And a bar running along the whole left side. A Black man with a gold earring was serving drinks, and he had a full house. Five people.
A shirtless man in cargo shorts occupied the first stool. The rest of the patrons were women. Two were in their twenties, slim and pretty, wearing shorts and T-shirts. The other two were a little older and stouter, in flowery cotton dresses. Their skin colors ranged from chocolate brown to ebony.
And every single one had copper-colored hair.
CHAPTER 74
THE CHATTER STOPPED cold when I entered. I felt like a gunfighter walking into the town saloon. Then the bartender looked up and gave me a wide grin. “Beer?”
“Please,” I said. It was more like a relieved groan.
He pulled a bottle from a cooler and popped the cap. I grabbed it and chugged half of it down, then took a seat at one of the small tables. I put my cloth sack on a chair where I could see it. The conversation at the bar ramped up again. Ed Sheeran was still piping out from a speaker on the wall. Nobody seemed that interested in me.
When I glanced out the window, I could see the tiny girl using a foot pump to transfer gas from the plastic tank to mine. I looked over at the bartender and jerked my thumb toward the dock. “Your daughter?”
“My niece,” he said. “Neema. Very competent. Working to save up for her own boat.”
For some reason, I flashed on the boys back on theisland. Not much bigger than Neema, most of them. I remembered watching them pilot outriggers on choppy seas, mend nets with scissors and fishing line, and catch our dinner with wooden spears. Then I thought about the privileged students in my lecture classes back in Chicago. I seriously doubted that a single one of them knew how to change a tire.
I took another sip of my beer. One of the women walked over and set a plate of fried fish in front of me. “Our treat,” she said. “You look hungry.”
“You have no idea,” I said. “Thank you.” I bit into a greasy chunk of battered fish and washed it down with the rest of my beer. Heaven.
“Need anything else?” she asked.
“I do,” I said, wiping my mouth with a paper napkin. “I need an off-road vehicle and a high-powered rifle.”
Now I had everybody’s attention.
“You a safari hunter?” one of the women asked, fingering her copper-tinted dreadlocks.