He headed out back, waving to the others to follow him.
Clarinda, Jamie’s favorite server and Katie’s close friend, stopped him as he headed out. “Sean, should I set you all up out there? Do you want dinner and drinks, and should I be steering other people away?”
He paused, feeling a break in his temper at last. “Yeah, thanks, Clarinda, that would be great.” Come to think of it, they hadn’t eaten.
The contents of the chest had made them all forget the fact that they hadn’t had dinner.
She smiled sympathetically and moved on; Clarinda would have known, from Katie, what they had discovered in their “treasure” find.
He walked on out to the patio. It was typical Key West, lots of shrubs and trees surrounding Cuban tile flooring and wooden tables, some round, some square, some oblong. Umbrellas over the tables shaded them from heat during the day and were enough shelter against rain when it was light. He stood by the table, waiting.
The group began to trail out, Vanessa in the lead. Once they could hear, she began the introductions.
There was a large crowd outside by then, so it seemed. Vanessa, Jay and the film crew, himself, David, Jaden and Ted. Jaden and Ted were quiet, watching, as if they were suddenly part of an unexpected reality TV show.
Vanessa was quiet after the introductions, taking a seat at one of the long, oblong tables.
“You all know what we’re planning on doing, right?” Sean asked.
“Yes!” Barry said. “It’s great. We’re so pleased. We were all going to ask you guys for work anyway, and then we talked to your cousin, Liam, and he explained that you wanted those of us who were involved to talk about what happened on camera. But we can help you enormously in other ways,” he said.
“Great,” Sean said. “I’m sure you all work well together. And that’s great. But what we really want is to get each one’s perspective of what went on at Haunt Island.”
Zoe began speaking quickly. “We’re so grateful for this opportunity.”
Clarinda came out in the midst of it all.
“Okay, guys, let me get your orders in. The place is getting busy,” she said.
Beer seemed to be the main order for the night, and O’Hara’s offered a vast variety. There was confusion as people took seats so that she could take food orders.
Sean wound up at the head of the table at one end, David at the other. They did resemble some kind of strange patriarchs in a ragtag family.
“We’ve already started filming,” Jay told the newcomers excitedly. “And guess what? Vanessa found a corpse!”
“A corpse?” Zoe demanded, staring down the table at Vanessa.
“We thought we had a treasure chest. It was a corpse,” Vanessa said.
“Well, it was a chest—it just wasn’t filled with treasure,” Jay said. “It held a corpse. But you know what? We think it might be Dona Isabella.”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Jaden protested softly. She joined the discussion with enthusiasm. “We don’t know anything, really, but the preservation is remarkable. Somehow, when the poor woman was murdered and stuffed in the chest, she became mummified. The chest was sealed, as if…as if…oh, I don’t know. Maybe someone felt remorse and wanted to see that she was preserved in her tomb in the sea. It’s eerie. She’s all there…clothes and all, and she’s at an strange angle…neck broken, at least that’s what it looks like.”
“Dona Isabella? I thought she died during the massacre on Haunt Island, or if not, when the pirate ship went down southwest of the Bahamas,” Zoe said.
“Everything about Mad Miller, Kitty Cutlass and Dona Isabella is pure speculation, really,” Vanessa said. “There were one or two survivors who actually made it to shore when the Santa Geneva went down. They were the ones who told of the pirate attack. The Santa Geneva was accosted, there was some kind of communication between Mad Miller and her captain, and then the Santa Geneva was fired upon. Before she sank, the pirates boarded, cutting down the crew and kidnapping Dona Isabella. We know, too, that there was a massacre on Haunt Island, because the Bahamians found the remains. They knew that the pirate ship had come there, and that it had sailed. We know that it went down in a hurricane, because it was seen by an American ship when that ship barely survived the same storm. In fact, sailors swore that the pirate ship went down when a massive burst of fire flared in the sky. If the Bermuda Triangle had been labeled the Bermuda Triangle back then, it might have taken the blame. They called it an act of God. At least they didn’t think that aliens came down and swept up the pirate ship.”
Zoe giggled. “Well, if aliens came down, they missed poor Dona Isabella’s treasure-chest tomb. Hey, I know debris travels, but not that far. The Santa Geneva went down off Key West, and the pirate ship—however it went!—perished off of South Bimini and Haunt Island. So the story is all wrong somewhere along the line.”