'Four years later, a Spaniard named Melian found the Santa Margarita. He and his crew salvaged a great deal of its treasure and thought they knew where the Atocha lay. They set up camp on one of the Marquesas and worked for four years on the salvage operation. They never found the Atocha.
'Indians lived in the Marquesas in those days, and they sometimes helped the Spaniards and sometimes fought them. A crew in one of the small boats used in the salvage operation was blown east during a major thunderstorm in the summer of 1627. They ended up on the eastern side of what today is called Boca Grande Channel, and the sailors took shelter on a small island.
'A few days later, a search party located the beached boat and went ashore. They found the twelve men dead, their throats cut. They were lying on the beach, and their blood had soaked into the sand. They called the little island Isla de Sangre, Blood Island.'
'That's quite a story.'
'The Keys are full of grand and bloody stories,' he said.
Over dinner, he regaled me with tales of bad men and good who had made the Keys what they are today. We finished our meal, and he thanked me again for helping him out of a bad situation. He stood to leave. I told him I'd stay for one more beer.
'Let me know if I can ever return the favor,' he said, as we shook hands. 'I'll be here another couple of days. We head north the day after tomorrow.' He walked out the door with a group of people headed his way.
I sat quietly for a while, thinking about my day. My fear for Laura was escalating. I had to control that. I couldn't let my love for Laura and my fear for her safety cloud my judgment. This was just another battle in another war. I had to take charge of my emotions. I knew Laura wouldn't do anything foolish. She knew I was looking for Peggy. If she'd decided to take steps on her own, she would have let me know. She would never have left Jeff and Gwen alone and worried. Something bad had happened to her. Maybe Peggy was the key to Laura. I grabbed desperately onto that thought and banished the fear. For now.
I looked at my watch. It was nearing ten o'clock, and I still had to check out the massage parlor. I needed to find out who lived on Blood Island, and I thought I knew how to do that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I walked back toward Old Town, and on a little side street off Simonton, I found the Heaven Can't Wait Spa. It was housed in a Victorian mansion, its white paint gleaming in the reflected glow from the nearby streetlights. This was a more upscale part of town than where Crill lived, and the city had provided illumination more fitting to its wealthy citizens.
I walked up the wide front steps to the veranda that ran the width of the house. A porch swing hung from its chains attached to the ceiling. A discreet sign was fastened to the wall next to the door that announced the establishment's name and hours of operation. HEAVEN CAN'T WAIT SPA. OPEN UNTIL. MIDNIGHT. Beneath the words was a logo of some sort, a Greek cross encircled by flowers.
I looked at my watch. Almost eleven. I could hear traffic a half block away on Simonton, not heavy this time of night, but steady. Cicadas hummed in the shrubs on either side of the porch steps. Otherwise, there was quiet. No noise escaped from the house.
I opened the door and stepped into a large foyer. The hardwood floors gleamed with fresh wax. Expensive Oriental carpets broke up the space. A wide curving stairway rose to the second floor. Off to my right I could see through open double doors to what must have been the parlor when rich people lived here. On my left was a formal dining room with a crystal chandelier hanging low over a long table surrounded by chairs with carved backs.
The foyer extended past the stairway into the back of the house. There was a Queen Anne desk sitting on a large Oriental carpet next to the stairs. A young blonde woman rose from behind the desk as I entered.
She was wearing a white gown of some light material. It covered her from neck to ankles. Her hair fell straight to her shoulders. She wore no makeup that I could see. Eyes of deep blue. Her smile was perfect. A typical white bread girl from the Midwest.
'Can I help you?' she asked in an accent of the Deep South. Alabama maybe, or Georgia. Certainly not the Midwest.
'I was told I could get a massage here,' I said.
She wrinkled her pretty nose at me, assessing my shoddy attire and perhaps my less than optimal body odor. 'Yes, but it's three hundred dollars for an hour,' she said, her smile displaying less wattage than before.
I pulled three one hundred dollar bills from my pocket and lay them on the desk. 'Okay.'
She smiled again, a little less dubiously, I thought, and pointed toward the parlor. 'Have a seat in there,' she said, 'and someone will be right with you.'
'I've never been here before.'
'I didn't think so.'
'Is this the only place you have like this?'
'No, sir. We have branches all over the Southeast.'
'What other cities?'
'Many of them. Please have a seat, sir,' she said, pointing again to the parlor.
I sat. I was tired. It had been a long day, and the beers I had drunk over dinner were making me sleepy. My eyelids were drooping, and I startled myself awake. It wouldn't do to crash here.
In a few minutes another young lady came into the parlor. She was wearing the same gown as the receptionist, and looked so much like her they could have been sisters.
'Come with me, sir,' she said. 'I'm Sister Amy.'
SisterAmy? What was this?
I followed her up the stairs, getting another smile from the receptionist as we passed her desk. Sister Amy led me into a large bedroom, with a massage table on one side. A king-size bed with a canopy took up the other side of the room. I saw a large mirror attached to the underside of the canopy, angled to give the occupants of the bed a bird's-eye view of themselves.
A door, recessed into the wall near the massage table, led to a bathroom. Sister Amy pointed toward it.
'You may take a shower, if you like,' she said.
'I think I'll pass for now.'
'Would you like to pray?'
'Pray? No.' This was weird. 'Why would we pray?'
'This is a Christian house, sir.'
'No. No shower and no prayer.'
'Suit yourself,' she said, and undid some sort of fastener on the gown. It fell to her feet, and she stepped out of it. She was completely nude. She stood quietly, as if waiting for inspection. I complied.
She was beautiful. Her breasts were full, but not large, her stomach flat, tapering down to a thatch of blonde pubic hair. Her body was without scar or blemish, except for a small tattoo at the top of her left breast; a Greek cross in a circle of flowers.
There was something not quite right about the way she looked at me. Her blue eyes seemed dilated, and were fixed on a spot above my head. Her face and voice were devoid of animation. It was almost as if I were talking to a robot.
'Do you really want a massage?' she asked. 'We can just fuck if that's what you want.'
'I really don't want either,' I said.
'You don't like me?'
'It's not that. You're beautiful, but I'm really looking for someone else.'
She frowned slightly, as if not sure what to make of this.
'There are other girls,' she said. 'I'll tell Sister Barbara to send someone else up.'
'No. I don't want any services.'
'But Sister Barbara said you asked about a massage.'
'Sister Barbara?'
'The receptionist.'
