Rhumb Line Bend: A Krewe of Jupiter Novel

Copyright © 2007 by C. G. McDaniel

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Contents

Foreword By Author

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

CHAPTER 65

CHAPTER 66

CHAPTER 67

CHAPTER 68

CHAPTER 69

CHAPTER 70

CHAPTER 71

CHAPTER 72

CHAPTER 73

CHAPTER 74

CHAPTER 75

EPILOGUE

About C. G. McDaniel

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used

fictitiously.

For more information on

The Krewe of Jupiter series of novels by C. G. McDaniel,

visit www.Krewe-Of-Jupiter.com on the World Wide Web.

For my Ceil and our children;

My past, my present, & my future.

For Big ‘G’, ‘cause everybody needs a Buddy!

Foreword By Author 

As I finished writing Rhumb Line Bend, the second book in the Krewe of Jupiter series, I couldn’t help but start to feel a little clairvoyant.

In the first book, Nautical Contraband, the character Buddy goes through a divorce. My good friend who inspires the Buddy Bear character has now gone through the same, and oddly enough has talked about living on a boat.

My wife broke her leg in a much similar fashion as occurs to one of the characters in Rhumb Line Bend.

Most eerily though is that when I sat down to write Rhumb Line Bend it was after the hurricane season of 2004, and the storms Frances and Jeanne, but before the unbelievable season of 2005. Little did we know there would be 28 named storms during the 2005 season.

In Rhumb Line Bend I write of three hurricanes pounding Florida, and causing the levy to break around Lake Okeechobee. I wrote of these things well before the horrible events of Hurricane Katrina, and the devastation that was wrought on New Orleans and the surrounding areas by the storm and the subsequent breaching of her levies.

It is a scary thing to see your words come to life, and my thoughts go out to all those still recovering now, well into 2007. If any one good thing has come of it, the Lake Okeechobee Levy is now getting some well deserved attention. Hopefully it is not too late to prevent a New Orleans level catastrophe in South Florida.

Maybe in the third book, 99 Island, I’ll write about winning the lottery!

* * * *

One of the things many folks have asked me about the Krewe of Jupiter series, is how they can visit some of the exotic locales in the books.

Well as most authors do, I take liberties with many of the locations that appear in the books. In Nautical Contraband I sometime combined pieces from several island locations into one.

I still reserve the right to fictionalize as necessary, however in Rhumb Line Bend I tried to give the reader an actual path to follow if they wanted to visit the various locations.

In fact, many of the chapters have GPS coordinates at the beginning to assist in locating them. I am also sponsoring a little contest through a process called geo-caching.

For those of you who do not know what geocaching is, it’s a worldwide treasure hunt! Using the web site www.geocaching.com, individual hide secret caches around the world. You can then use your personal GPS unit to find them.

Some are as simple as finding the coordinates, some are multi-part and require solving puzzles. Ours falls into this second category.

In Rhumb Line Bend there are 29 GPS coordinates throughout the book. For each one, find the location, answer the associated question, and take a picture of yourself with something identifying the location. Email your pictures and your answers to RhumbLineBendChallenge@SummerTyde.com

Search on Rhumb Line Bend on the geocaching web site for the list of questions and details.

The first person to successfully complete the challenge will get a weekend in the Florida Keys on me! Each subsequent person who successfully completes the challenge will get a surprise from the Krewe Of Jupiter Sea Chest.

I invite everyone to participate. Happy Hunting!

* * * *

Lastly I would like to thank the many folks who helped make this book happen, including my great editor, Pam Hughes, and all the locations around Jupiter and the islands that agreed to be featured in the book. Visit the Dune Dog or the Square Grouper, you will not regret it! Most important I would like to thank Ceil and the kids, their patience and support while I read chapters to them at 1:00am was priceless to me.

C.G. McDaniel June 20,2007 La Vie Dansante Jupiter, Florida

PROLOGUE 

December 24, 1983

By some miracle, Buddy Bear and I had survived the first half of our Citadel senior year with Jason Bonnet as our roommate. Barreling toward the top of the infamous Cooper River Bridge, in 30 degree weather with the top down, campus MPs and half of the Charleston police force on our tail, made me wonder if we were approaching the apex of our higher learning opportunity as well.

I glanced over at my best friend Anthony Buddy Bear Phillips who was squeezed into the passenger seat of my ‘67 Jag. His jaw was set as he squinted into the wind, dirty blond hair wildly billowing over the back collar of his cadet uniform.

Jason Bonnet was standing up between the seats, holding onto the top of windshield. I don’t know if it was the wind stinging his eyes or his soul, but tears were streaming down his face.

Faster, Grantford! Faster! Jason bellowed from above.

I can barely keep her planted on the bridge with this cross wind as it is! I hissed, vainly trying to push the gas peddle through the floor.

Sirens blared behind us as the black & whites maneuvered to cut us off. The campus MP’s jeep PA blared. PULL OVER BOYS, BEFORE SOMEONE GETS HURT!

Buddy pointed excitedly to the top of the span. Up there Kris, I see her Pinto!

I squinted past the ancient yellowed beams of the Jag. Less than five hundred yards away at the top of the center span a red-faded-to-rust Ford Pinto sat sideways across the only two lanes of the old bridge.

Oh please God, I hope we are not too late, Jason moaned from the depths of his soul.

The cops had outdistanced the MP jeep and were now moving into the incoming traffic lane to cut me off.

Hold on, guys! It’s about to get ugly! I tightened my hands on the wheel.

Buddy turned to me with an alarmed look. Kris, don’t even think about …

That was as far as he got. I slammed the wheel to the left and sent the Jag screaming into the path of the approaching patrol cars. Then I locked down the brakes.

The old Cooper River Bridge, also called the Grace Memorial Bridge, was built in 1929 and has only two ten feet lanes of opposing direction traffic. The cantilever steel structure has a main span of 1050 feet and a total length of 3.6 miles. It does not have any shoulders, and it has caused more than one first time driver to need a change of underwear by the time he got to the other side.

I gunned the gas again as the sound of shredding brakes and twisting metal shrieked behind us. At that moment, I knew the childhood nightmare of every Charleston cop chasing us was becoming a reality. Nothing was worse than driving off the Cooper River Bridge.

Jason glanced back over his shoulder. Good job Grantford, looks like nobody is hurt, but boy do they have a pile-up back there.

Buddy sighed, white knuckled. Good Gawd, Kris, are you trying to get us killed?

Hey, it bought us some time, didn’t it? I frowned.

Buddy nodded reluctantly, still shaking from our wild ride.

We skidded to a halt in front of the red Pinto. Jason jumped out and ran for the car. Buddy and I followed hot on his heels.

Jason bounced off the open door of the Pinto in his frenzied state. Carmen, Carmen where are you? he screamed blindly into the night.

I heard Buddy’s quiet measured voice at my elbow. Jason, she’s out there. Jason and I followed Buddy’s outstretched finger. There on the edge of a narrow steel abutment girder protruding ten feet out into the abyss was Carmen Navarre. Her back was to us, her arms reaching up searching for the missing moon, as the wicked wind whipped her long black hair into a living thing.

* * * *

All this had started only a short while back. Buddy and I had taken Jason as our roommate only a few months prior, and he had already gotten us into more trouble than we had experienced in our entire Citadel careers. We felt like we were knobs again, scrubbing toilets with toothbrushes, and on constant garbage run patrol because of the shit Jason pulled.

It didn’t matter though, because we were having the time of our lives. Buddy and I had gotten complacent during our first three years at school. Jason felt it was his God-given right to spice up our lives. His schemes and scams ranged from a baby shower complete with stripper for the celibate campus Chaplin, to XXX movie night projected on the side of the administrative building by the parade grounds.

Thanks to Jason, we rarely got leave anymore, even though that was normally a senior privilege. But on the rare occasion we did get to escape campus grounds, we always seemed to wind up at Jason’s Aunt Edna’s harbor front mansion.

Aunt Edna and her butler Otis always treated us like family. Buddy and I did not come from old Charleston money like Jason, so we were always grateful for a free and delicious off-campus hot meal.

On one of these outings that happened to fall on Halloween, we sat on the second floor piazza watching the trick-or-treaters skip on the sidewalk below. Jason was taking great joy, yelling for Otis to get the door every time a little ghoul or goblin rang at the wrought iron gate. I could hear Otis grumbling with each trip he had to make.

As the bright low country moon rose overhead, sending silver shadows chasing themselves across the water, the stream of trick-or-treaters slowly dried up. It had been a good twenty minutes since the gate bell had last rang, and we were all half dozing on the porch, inhaling the musty brackish smell of harbor and marsh.

The bell rang, piercing the night.

Hey Big-O, can you get that? Jason chortled for the hundredth time that night.

Get it yourself, you lazy blue blood! The Barbados accent wafted from below. I am tired of your childish games!

Jason started to tease once more, when the bell rang again, more urgent and prolonged than the first time. Jason grinned, shrugged, got off his chaise lounge and headed down stairs. Buddy stretched like an overfed cat and padded after him. I glanced at my watch, noting that we needed to be back on campus in an hour to make curfew. I followed as well.

As Buddy and I approached the gate, we could see Jason carrying on a conversation with a tall dark-haired woman about our age. As I got closer I saw a little girl by her side. She was about six and wore a homemade witch’s costume.

Her Spanish-accented voice lilted to us over the breeze. Her name was Carmen, and she was apologizing for bringing her little sister to trick-or-treat so late.

She explained that she worked double shifts cleaning houses for a maid service, and that caused them to get a late start.

Jason was so enamored by her that he completely forgot his low country manners and didn’t even introduce Buddy and me. I could understand why; she was indeed a beauty. Long straight raven hair framed a tan face with snapping black chestnuts for eyes. Her breasts were heavy and upright, and her legs went on for miles.

Jason did what Jason does best, and before long she was telling him her life story. Her parents were immigrants, but had been killed in a car accident a month after she graduated from high school. She now raised her little sister Mary herself, and she didn’t need food stamps or help from anyone. She was too proud for that.

Suddenly Carmen realized she had said too much, and quietly apologized, shuffling Mary down the sidewalk.

Wait! Buddy blurted. Why don’t you take the rest of the candy we have? I don’t think there will be anymore trick-or-treaters tonight.

Carmen smiled past Jason at the big guy in the unbuttoned Citadel uniform, whose name she did not even know.

No thank-you, just one will do.

But Carmen, Mary whined, why not?

We only want what is fair coming to us, Maria Maria Absolutamente Contraria.

Mary poked out her lip, but broke into a grin when Buddy handed her the biggest candy bar in the bowl.

Carmen shook her head, but smiled. We must be going now. It was nice to meet you Mr. Bonnet, and you as well senors. And then she was gone in the night as quickly as she had appeared.

Jason turned around. He had the goofiest shit-eating grin on his face I had ever seen.

Oh crap, Buddy murmured. Does that look mean what I think it means?

Yep! I grinned. Looks like the unhookable Casanova Bonnet just got landed.

Jason was indeed smitten. He talked Aunt Edna into calling the maid service that Carmen worked for, and having her come in to ‘give Otis a hand’. Otis was not thrilled, but then again, nothing ever seemed to thrill Otis.

Jason stayed on the straight and narrow to maximize his leave time off-base, so he could see Carmen every chance he got. Buddy and I went from party city to bored silly. Jason was oblivious to everyone except Carmen.

At first Carmen was all business and did not want to have anything to do with Jason. However, when they wrote the charm book, Jason’s face was on the cover. Over time, fields of flowers, and vats of chocolates, Jason wore her down.

She shared with him her dream of one day saving up enough money to open up her own catering business. Right now, though, all her money had to go toward raising Mary.

At the beginning of December, Jason had a supposedly great idea. If he had bothered to share it with Buddy and me, we would have told him it was stupid beyond belief.

Jason had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He grew up attending boarding prep schools on old Southern plantations. The idea seemed natural to him and a perfect way to make all Carmen’s dreams come true. For Carmen’s Christmas present, he would pay for Mary to attend boarding school at Ashley Hall Prep School. This would give Mary a great education and free Carmen to open her catering service.

Since Jason still had obligations at the Citadel and would not get leave again until Christmas Day, he enlisted Otis to make all the arrangements for him. Jason was feeling so proud of himself on Christmas Eve that he was about to burst. He finally broke the news to Buddy and me. We tried to warn him, but Jason would not listen-in his eyes, Carmen was going to be elated. Jason had even set it up so that Otis could take Mary to get fitted for her school uniform. The plan was that when he shared his present with Carmen, Mary could model the new uniform then and there.

It was not to be. While Otis was out taking Mary for her fitting, an overzeal-ous last-minute holiday shopper ran a stop sign and t-boned Aunt Edna’s Bentley. Otis suffered a few broken ribs, but Mary’s side took the full impact of the crash. The little girl died instantly.

The first Jason knew of this was when campus security told him there was a woman outside the barbed-wire topped fence of the Citadel perimeter screaming for him.

Poor Otis had been put in the unfortunate position of not only telling Carmen that her little sister was gone, but also why she was riding in the Bentley in the first place.

Carmen was completely inconsolable. She howled at Jason with the fury of a storm. Her parents had been taken away, and now he had taken away the only other thing she had to live for.

The tears ran down his face as Jason tried to apologize and to comfort her. She would have no part of it, and no part of him. Her life was now over. She beat on the chain link fence in a fruitless attempt to get to Jason, until her fist ran red with blood. Jason could only stand there and sob.

Carmen spit through the mesh onto Jason’s shoes, and with a string of choked Spanish curses, she fled into the night.

Jason banged the fence with his fist. I have to get out of here! I have to catch her before she does something stupid!

I furrowed my brow. "Frickin’ leave doesn’t start till 8:00 tomorrow morning.

Buddy roared to life. Then, by God, it’s time for us to make our own leave!

I nodded. Let’s go get the Jag.

We roared through the Citadel’s front gate barrier at more than seventy miles an hour. The MP jeep was hot on our trail before we even got through town. We ran every stoplight in the city getting to Carmen’s small apartment in the shadow of the Cooper River Bridge. Her landlady spoke no English, but pointed us in the direction of the bridge.

We barely pulled out before the MP Jeep pulled in. It looked like he had called for reinforcements. Every cop car on the peninsula was following the MP jeep and us up the ramp to the Cooper River Bridge.

* * * *

The three of us stood by the icy railing as Carmen floated just ten feet out of reach above the Cooper River as it rushed into the harbor.

Easy Jason, Buddy cautioned as our friend climbed to the beginning of the girder where Carmen perched.

Carmen, Jason’s voice trembled softly.

Carmen Navarre slowly turned to face Jason. Mascara streamed down her face with her tears. You bastard! She snarled. You took my Maria, my last treasure, from me. You, with your big money and white smile. You have been given everything you ever wanted. I only wanted one thing, and you took it away. I wanted to love and raise my Maria the way my parents would have wanted. Now I have failed them, and you have failed me.

Jason inched further onto the girder, with his arms outstretched to her. Please, Carmen. I’m sorry. I swear I’ll make it up to you somehow. Please just come to me before you get hurt.

Carmen shook her head slowly. You will make it up to me? You will make it up to me? Someday you will learn, Jason Bonnet, that there are more important things in life than you.

Carmen crossed herself, spread her arms, raised her head to heaven, and fell backwards off the girder into the icy water hundreds of feet below.

Nooooooooo! Jason screamed and went barreling down the girder after her. Buddy and I barely had time to grab him and pull him back onto the bridge before he dove after her. We pulled him, sobbing, back to safety.

You can’t do it, Jason! Buddy puffed in the cold air. She’s gone; there’s no way anyone could survive that fall.

We circled up and held our weeping friend, as Charleston’s finest surrounded us with their pistols drawn.

* * * *

Once local law enforcement understood the situation, they let us off the hook. The Citadel was not so understanding. We would go through a case and a half of toothbrushes cleaning toilets. The only time we were let off base for months was to attend Carmen and Mary’s funeral. They were buried beside their parents in a simple plot.

After the funeral, Jason disappeared inside a shell. On the outside, he seemed to be his old self again. Laughing and scamming … always getting us into trouble. But I knew that a piece of him had gone into the cold Cooper River that Christmas Eve night, and I don’t know if it will ever resurface again.

CHAPTER 1 

September 18, 1926

Wilson pulled the gray faux-felt cowboy hat down tightly over his too large ears, as the driving rain stung his face. The wind was howling like a bitch, but he could still hear the baying hounds in the distance.

He spit a long stream of tobacco juice into the wind, only to have it thrown back into his face by the gale. He swiped his eyes with a blind arm, cursing and fretting over his predicament.

His eyes bore a hole in the large coffin-like crate sitting in the mud of his fishing camp. The Loxahatchee River was furious just ten feet down the dock. Waves crashed over the flimsy pilings, and the dock disappeared in a rage of brown water and foam.

Goddamn it! he screamed to no one. He watched as the old wide bodied skiff he used for transporting illegal rum sank below the waves where it had been tied at the end of the dock.

The skiff was how he planned to get the crate to the Boss. It would not have been easy in this tempest, but the skiff was his best bet. Take the crate up the Loxahatchee, hack his way through miles of Florida jungle, up unnamed canals and tributaries, and he could get within a mile of the Boss’ house. He could have hiked over from there and gotten help to drag the crate to the Boss’ cellar.

Wilson spat again, being careful this time to spit in the direction the wind was roaring. Good God, it had taken him most of the night to drag the damn crate from his storage shed on the other side of camp to the dock. What the hell was he going to do now?

He turned his head into the wind. The dogs were closer now, and he let his mind wander for a few precious seconds.

Three nights ago the evening had been starless, and the inlet was dead calm. The boys in their double-winged flying boat had tipped him off that the damned revenuers were onto him again. He thought it was bullshit. Hell, the revenuers were always only a hound’s tick away from catching up to him any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

He was more concerned with the huge crate the fly boys had dumped into his skiff, along with the customary barrels of rum. Hell, the size of the crate made his skiff sink six inches deeper into the Jupiter Inlet.

What the hell is that, you bastards? he had demanded. You almost swamped me!

The fly boys thought the whole thing was pretty damn funny-until he cocked both barrels of his shotgun at them. That stopped them from laughing real quick-like.

Go ahead, the shorter square-headed one snarled. Put holes in us and the Boss’ plane and see what happens.

Yeah, the tall skinny one grinned. The Boss will cut your old ass up and feed you to those jackasses of yours.

He lowered the barrels through gritted teeth and evened his voice. Okay, okay, no hard feelings boys. He forced a tobacco-stained grin. So what is in the crate?

Skinny pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. The glow burned brightly as he inhaled deeply.

Wilson looked furtively back over his shoulder in the direction of the Jupiter Light, no more than five hundred yards away on shore. Damn idiot was going to get them all caught.

Skinny flicked his ashes in Wilson’s direction. You need to mind your own damn business, Donkey Man. If the Boss wanted you touching his shit, he wouldn’t have nailed the crate shut.

Square Head snickered. Yeah old man. Your job’s the same as always—hold onto the rum and the crate until the next moonless night, then transport ‘em over to the safe house.

But my jacks can’t handle something as big as that crate, Wilson stammered. How the hell am I supposed to get it over there?

That’s your problem, Donkey man, Skinny grinned through rotted teeth. But don’t be late. You know how the Boss don’t like to be disappointed.

Square Head loosened the line attaching the Curtis Seagull to the skiff, and Skinny roared the engine to life, drowning Wilson in salty spray.

The two turned the boat on a dime and were up on the step in feet. They took to the air and roared east, missing the top of the Jupiter Inlet train trestle by mere feet, then storming past the lighthouse with their typical