Troubles in Paradise Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2020 by Elin Hilderbrand

  Cover design by Lauren Harms

  Cover photograph by cdwheatley / Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-43561-1

  LCCN 2020938382

  E3-20200819-NF-DA-ORI

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  Text Irene

  Baker

  Huck

  Ayers

  Cash

  Maia

  Irene

  Ayers

  Cash

  Baker

  Huck

  Ayers

  Cash

  St. John

  Maia

  Baker

  Huck

  Ayers

  Irene

  St. John

  Ellen

  Tilda

  Huck

  Maia

  Margaret Quinn

  St. John

  Irene

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Also by Elin Hilderbrand

  For TGF

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  Author’s Note

  The Paradise series has come to an end. (And oh, how I hope all of you who are about to read this book are not only now realizing that it is the third one in a trilogy. If so, first go and read book 1, Winter in Paradise, and book 2, What Happens in Paradise, and then this one will make more sense!) I will dearly miss Irene, Huck, and the gang, and I hope you will too.

  As many of you may realize, the hurricane described in this novel is fictional, though it is based on the all-too-real events of the fall of 2017, when Hurricane Irma and then Hurricane Maria—both category 5 storms—hit the Virgin Islands. This is a case where real life is far stranger than fiction. I could never have ended this series with not one but two life-threatening storms rolling through the islands; no one would have believed it. As with the other books, the St. John portrayed in these pages is one that lives only in my imagination. The hurricanes hit a few months before I started writing this series, and, having nothing to draw on but my memories, I created an island that is half before-the-storms St. John and half after-the-storms St. John. The most important thing to know now is that the Virgin Islands have recovered; America’s Paradise is once again open for business, and it’s even better than it was because of what it has survived.

  We’re just a sinner’s choir, singing a song for the saints.

  —Kenny Chesney, “Song for the Saints”

  St. John

  The gossip recently has been as juicy as a papaya, one that gives just slightly under our fingertips and is fragrant on the inhale, the inside a brilliant coral color, bursting with seeds like so many ebony beads. If you don’t fancy papaya, think of a mango as we crosshatch the ripe flesh of the cheeks with a sharp knife or a freshly picked pineapple from the fertile fields of St. Croix, deep gold, its chunks sweeter than candy. Like these island fruits, the talk around here is irresistible.

  The drama began on New Year’s Day with tragedy: a helicopter crash a few miles away, in British waters. One of our own was killed, Rosie Small, whom some of us remember back when she was in LeeAnn’s belly. Because LeeAnn’s first husband, Levi Small, left the island when Rosie was a toddler, we’d all had a hand in raising her. We sympathized with LeeAnn when the cute Rosie girl we doted on turned into the precocious Rosie teenager LeeAnn couldn’t quite control. At the tender age of fifteen, Rosie dated a fella named Oscar Cobb from St. Thomas who drove the Ducati that nearly ran our friend Rupert off Route 107 right into Coral Bay. We were all overjoyed when Oscar went to jail for stabbing his best friend. Good riddance! we said. Throw away the key! A group of us took LeeAnn out for celebratory drinks at Miss Lucy’s. We thought we’d dodged a bullet; Rosie would not waste her life on a good-for-nothing man with shady business dealings like Oscar Cobb.

  The man Rosie ended up with was far more dangerous.

  After LeeAnn died, five years ago now, Rosie took a secret lover. We called him the “Invisible Man” because none of us had ever caught more than a glimpse of him. But while Paulette Vickers was under the dryer at Dearie’s Beauty Shoppe, she let something slip about “Rosie Small’s gentleman.” Then Paulette clammed up and it was the clamming up that made us suspicious. Paulette was a little uppity because her parents had started the successful real estate agency Welcome to Paradise. She liked to talk. When she stopped talking, we started listening.

  The Invisible Man’s name was Russell Steele. He was killed in the helicopter crash along with Rosie and the pilot, an attorney from the Caymans named Stephen Thompson. They were on their way to Anegada. The callous among us commented that they should have taken a boat like normal folk, especially since there were thunderstorms. The perceptive among us noted that, while there were thunderstorms on New Year’s morning, they were south and west of St. John, not northeast, which was the direction the helicopter would have been flying to get to Anegada.

  Both Virgin Islands Search and Rescue and the FBI had reason to believe that the helicopter exploded. Maybe an accident—an electrical malfunction—or maybe something else.

  If you think this is intriguing, imagine hearing of the arrival of the Invisible Man’s family. For, yes indeed, Russell Steele was married, with two grown sons and one grandchild. And did his wife and sons stroll right down the St. John ferry dock on January 3 and climb into the car belonging to Paulette Vickers, who then whisked them off to whatever grand, secluded villa Russell Steele owned?

  Yes; yes, they did.

  Would the family of Russell Steele find out about Rosie?

  Yes; yes, they would.

  It was one of the taxi drivers, Chauncey, who witnessed a determined-looking woman marching down the National Park Service dock calling for Captain Sam Powers (we all know him as Huck), LeeAnn’s devoted second husband and Rosie’s stepfather, and then talking herself right onto Huck’s boat, the Mississippi. Chauncey remembers whistling under his breath because he had seen women on a rampage like that before and they always got what they were after.

  The two sons
appeared out and about in Cruz Bay, going to the usual places tourists go—La Tapa to enjoy the mussels, High Tide for happy hour. We saw these young men (one tall and clean-cut with a dimple, one stocky with bushy blond hair) in the company of two young women we were all very fond of (charming and lovely Ayers Wilson, who had been Rosie’s best friend, and Tilda Payne, whose parents owned a villa in exclusive Peter Bay), and that set us speculating, even though we knew that beautiful young people find one another no matter what the circumstances.

  When we learned that one of the sons, Baker Steele, took his child on a tour of the Gifft Hill School and that the other son, Cash Steele, had joined the crew of Treasure Island, we began to wonder: Were they staying?

  When we discovered that the Invisible Man’s wife, Irene Steele, was working as the first mate on Huck’s fishing boat, we thought: What exactly is going on?

  We couldn’t run into one another at Pine Peace Market or in line at the post office without asking in a whisper: You heard anything new?

  Sadie, out in Coral Bay, was the one who learned that the FBI had come looking for Paulette and Douglas Vickers, but Paulette and Douglas had taken their six-year-old son, Windsor, and fled by the time the FBI arrived. They went to St. Croix to hide out with Douglas’s sister in Frederiksted. Did one of us tell the FBI where they were? No one knew for sure, but Paulette and Douglas were arrested the very next day.

  We’d barely had time to recover from this shocking news when the FBI sent agents in four black cars along the North Shore Road to whatever secluded villa Russell Steele owned to inform Irene Steele that the villa and the entire hundred-and-forty-acre parcel we called Little Cinnamon was now the property of the U.S. government, since it had been purchased with dirty money.

  Whew! We woke up the next morning feeling like we had gorged ourselves. We were plump with gossip. It was, almost, too much.

  We feel compelled to mention that this kind of scandal isn’t typical of life here in the Virgin Islands.

  What is typical?

  “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” or “Good evening” at the start of every conversation.

  Sunshine, sometimes alternating with a soaking rain.

  Wild donkeys on the Centerline Road.

  Sunburned tourists spilling out of Woody’s during happy hour.

  Silver hook bracelets.

  Hills.

  Swaying palm trees and sunsets.

  Hikers in floppy hats.

  Rental Jeeps.

  Turtles in Salt Pond Bay.

  Full-moon parties at Miss Lucy’s.

  Mosquitoes in Maho Bay.

  Iguanas.

  Long lines at the Starfish Market (bring your own bags).

  Cruise-ship crowds on the beach at Trunk Bay.

  Steel-drum music and Chester’s johnnycakes.

  Snorkelers, whom we fondly call “one-horned buttfish.”

  Driving on the left.

  Nutmeg sprinkled on painkillers (the drink).

  Captain Stephen playing the guitar on the Singing Dog.

  Eight Tuff Miles, ending at Skinny Legs.

  A smile from Slim Man, who owns the parking lot downtown.

  Nude sunbathers on Salomon Bay.

  Rum punches and Kenny Chesney.

  Afternoon trade winds.

  Chickens everywhere.

  St. John has no traffic lights, no chain stores, no fast-food restaurants, and no nightclubs, unless you count the Beach Bar, where you can dance to Miss Fairchild and the Wheeland Brothers in the sand. St. John is quiet, authentic, unspoiled.

  Some people go so far as to call our island “paradise.”

  But, we quickly remind them, even paradise has its troubles.

  Irene

  Cigarette smoke. Bacon grease. Something that smells like three-day-old fish.

  Irene opens her eyes. Where is she?

  There’s a blue windowpane-print bedsheet covering her. She’s on a couch. Her neck complains as she turns her head. There’s a kitchen, and on the counter, a bottle of eighteen-year-old Flor de Caña.

  Huck’s house.

  Irene sits up, brings her bare feet to the wood floor. A suitcase with everything she owns in the world is open on the coffee table.

  She hears heavy footsteps and then: “Good morning, Angler Cupcake, how about some coffee?”

  She drops her face into her hands. How can Huck be thinking about coffee? Irene’s life is…over. This time yesterday she’d been steady and stable, which was no small feat considering only a little over a month has passed since her husband, Russell Steele, was killed in a helicopter crash and Irene, who’d believed Russ was in Florida playing golf and schmoozing with clients, discovered that Russ had a secret life down here in the Virgin Islands complete with mistress, love child, and a fifteen-million-dollar villa. Irene handled that news pretty damn well, if she does say so herself. Another woman might have had a nervous breakdown. Another woman might have set the villa on fire or taken out a full-page ad in the local paper (in Irene’s case, the Iowa City Press-Citizen) announcing her husband’s treachery. But Irene adapted to the shocking circumstances. She found that she liked the Virgin Islands so much that she’s returned here to live—maybe not forever, but for a little while, so she can catch her breath and regroup. Just yesterday she was looking around Russ’s villa, thinking how she would redecorate it, how she might turn it into an inn for women like herself who had survived cataclysmic life changes.

  Just last night, Irene felt like a teenager falling in love for the first time because, in a plot twist that happens only in novels and romantic comedies, Irene has developed feelings for Huck Powers, the stepfather of Russ’s mistress. The universe did Irene “a solid” (as Cash and Baker would say) when she met Huck. He’s an irresistible mix of gruff fisherman, devoted grandpa, and teddy bear. What would Irene’s situation look like if she hadn’t become friends with Huck? She can’t imagine.

  But entertaining notions of a love life is a luxury she can no longer afford. Last night, FBI agents seized Russ’s villa. It’s now the property of the U.S. government.

  If Irene was painfully honest with herself, she would admit that, once she got down here, she’d realized there was no way the business Russ had been involved in was aboveboard. From the minute Irene set eyes on it, the villa had a bit of a magic-carpet feel: Was it real? Would it fly?

  It was a tropical…palace. Nine bedrooms, each with its own en suite bath. The outdoor space featured an upper pool and a lower pool connected by a curvy slide, a hot tub dropped into a lush gardenscape, an outdoor kitchen, a shuffleboard court (which Irene had never used), and, eighty steps down, a small, private sugar-sand beach (which she had). The view across the water to Tortola and Jost Van Dyke was dramatic, soaring. The villa was so over-the-top luxurious that Irene was able to get past the fact that it had been the home of Russ and his mistress, Rosie, and their daughter, Maia. She had been looking forward to putting her own stamp on the place—choosing lighter, brighter fabrics, redoing a bathroom in an under-the-sea theme for her four-year-old grandson, Floyd, creating a custom window seat where she or Maia could read or nap.

  The far bigger, more devastating development is that, as Agent Colette Vasco of the FBI informed Irene, the authorities were, at that very moment, also seizing her home on Church Street in Iowa City, an 1892 Queen Anne–style Victorian that Irene had spent six years renovating. The Church Street house is Irene’s home. It’s where her photo albums, her cookbooks with the sauce-splattered pages and handwritten notes, her clothes, her teapot, and her Christmas ornaments are. She has the idea that maybe, with luck, some of these items might be returned to her, but how is she to accept the loss of, say, the third-floor landing, paneled in dark walnut with the east-facing stained-glass window, or the mural of Door County on the dining-room walls? Those “moments” in her house are priceless and irreplaceable. Irene thinks longingly of her amethyst parlor, the velvet fainting couch, the absurdly expensive Persian rugs, the Eastlake bed in t
he Excelsior suite, the washstand, the sepia-toned photograph of Russ’s mother, Milly, as a child in 1928.

  Thinking about that photograph brings Irene to her feet.

  Huck, it turns out, has been watching her every move. “Coffee?”

  She casts her eyes around the room and finds her phone plugged into the far wall. That’s right; Irene remembers being methodical about packing her suitcase and double-checking for essentials like her phone charger. Agent Vasco had looked on suspiciously, as though she thought Irene might try to slip in a stash of cocaine or blocks of hundred-dollar bills.

  When Irene got to Huck’s house, they each did a shot—or two? three?—of the Flor de Caña, and Irene only barely recalls plugging her phone in before sleep. She remembers so little about the end of the night that she supposes she should be grateful she woke up on the sofa and not in Huck’s bed.

  He’s a gentleman.

  “I need to make a phone call,” she says. “Do you have any…aspirin?” She points to her head. “Good morning,” she adds, because she has learned the number-one rule of the Virgin Islands: “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” or “Good evening” begins every conversation.

  “Two aspirin coming right up,” Huck says.

  “Three,” Irene says. Four, she thinks. “Please.”

  “The best reception is out on the deck,” Huck says.

  Irene slips through the sliding glass door, going from the pleasant air-conditioning of Huck’s house (though she gathered last night that he turned it on only because she was there) to the mounting heat of the day. Her phone says seven o’clock, which means it’s five o’clock in Iowa City.

  Five a.m. Will Lydia be awake at five a.m.? She is going through menopause and complains that now she never sleeps, so maybe. Even if she is asleep, Irene needs to wake her up. Dr. Lydia Christensen is her best friend; she claims she is there for Irene no matter what. The bonds of best-friendship get tested infrequently, especially as Irene prides herself on being self-sufficient.