“Yes, of course,” Lee answered without enthusiasm. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor. Enjoy your stay.”
Lee brushed Gamay’s extended hand with hers, and continued along the dock.
“Has Dr. Lee been here long?” Gamay asked.
“A few months,” Dooley said. “She doesn’t talk much about what she’s doing, and I don’t ask.”
He stopped at the end of the dock.
“This is as far as I’m allowed to go,” he said. “Give me a call if you need me. Remember, the only phone service from the island is from the top of the water tower.”
Gamay thanked Dooley, and watched his boat until it was out of sight. Then she picked up her duffel bag and climbed the stairs to the patio. The front door of the lodge burst open just then, and a man in a white lab coat came springing down the stairs from the veranda to the patio. He had the painfully thin physique of a runner. The stiffly extended handshake he gave Gamay was as limp and damp as a dead fish.
“Dr. Morgan-Trout, I presume,” he said, flashing a quick, precise smile. “I’m Dr. Charles Mayhew, the acting keeper of this madhouse while Dr. Kane is away.”
Gamay guessed that Mayhew had been watching for her arrival from the lodge. She smiled. “Thank you for having me as a guest on the island.”
“Our pleasure,” Mayhew oozed. “You have no idea how thrilled we were to learn that NUMA had invited Dr. Kane to dive in the bathysphere. I watched him make the dive. Too bad the television broadcast was cut short.”
“Will I get a chance to meet Dr. Kane?” Gamay asked.
“He’s involved with a field project,” Mayhew said. “I’ll show you your room.”
They climbed to the veranda and passed through wide double doors to the wood-paneled lobby. Beyond the lobby was a large, sunny dining room furnished with rattan chairs and tables of dark wood. Screened-in windows wrapped around the room on three sides. A smaller room off the dining room was called the Dollar Bar, harkening back to the days when guests signed dollar bills and stuck them on the wall. The bills got blasted off in the hurricane, Mayhew explained.
Gamay’s room was off a hallway a few steps from the bar.
Despite Mayhew’s earlier claim to having a full house, she was the only guest staying in the lodge. Her simple room had natural wood walls, an old metal-frame bed, and a dresser, and it projected a look of seedy comfort. A second door opened onto a screened-in porch that offered a view of the water through the palmettos. Gamay put her duffel on the bed.
“Happy hour starts in the Dollar Bar at five,” Mayhew said. “Make yourself at home. If you’d like to take a stroll, there are nature trails all over the island. A few areas have been restricted to avoid contamination from the outside world, but they are clearly marked.”
Mayhew bounded off with his bouncy Reebok stride. Gamay flipped open her cell phone, to let Paul know she had arrived, only to remember that Dooley said the only place with service was the water tower.
She followed a crushed-shell pathway past a row of neat cabins to the foot of the tower. After climbing to a platform at the top, she got a signal, but then she hesitated. Paul was most likely in a seminar, and she didn’t dare interrupt him again. She tucked the phone in her pocket.
She took in the view from the tower. The long, narrow island was shaped like a deformed pear. It was one of a group of mangrove islands whose rough texture looked like scatter rugs when seen from the air.
Gamay climbed down from the tower, working up a good sweat in the humidity with little exertion, and walked until she came to a tangle of mangroves where the trail ended. Turning around, she explored the island’s network of trails before returning to her room. After a refreshing catnap, she took a shower, and was patting her body dry when she heard laughter. Happy hour had started.
Slipping into white shorts and a pale green cotton blouse that complemented her dark red hair, now twisted up on the back of her head, she made her way to the Dollar Bar. About a dozen people in lab coats were sitting at the bar or around tables. The conversation came to a near stop as she entered, like a scene in an old Western where the gunslinger pushes through the swinging doors into the saloon.
Dr. Mayhew got up from a corner table, came over to the bar, and greeted Gamay with his quick smile.
“What can I get you to drink, Dr. Trout?” he asked.
“A Gibson would be fine,” she replied.
“Straight up or on the rocks?”
“Straight up, please.”
Mayhew relayed the order to the bartender, a well-muscled young man with a military-style brush cut. He shook the gin, poured, and put three onions on a toothpick, making it a Gibson martini instead of a martini with olives.
Mayhew guided Gamay and her drink back to a corner table. Pulling out a chair, he introduced her to the four people seated around the table, explaining that they were all part of the center’s development team.
The lone female at the table had short hair, and her pretty face was more boyish than feminine. Dory Bennett introduced herself, and said she was a toxicologist. She was drinking a tall mai tai.
“What brings you to the Island of Dr. Moreau?” asked the woman.
“I heard about this wonderful bar.” Gamay glanced around at the practically bare walls, and with a straight face added, “It seems that a dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to.”
There was a ripple of laughter around the table.
“Ah, a woman scientist with a sense of humor,” said Isaac Klein, a chemist.
“Dr. Klein, are you saying I don’t have a sense of humor?” Dr. Bennett asked. “I find your scientific papers veryfunny.”
The good-natured ribbing drew another round of laughter.
Dr. Mayhew said, “Dr. Bennett forgot to mention that the center’s assistant director is a woman as welclass="underline" Lois Mitchell.”
“Will I get to meet her?” Gamay asked.
“Not until she gets back from-” Dr. Bennett caught herself midsentence. “She’s away . . . in the field.”
“Lois is working with Dr. Kane,” Mayhew said. “When she’s here, the island is not as male dominated as might appear at first glance.”
Gamay pretended she hadn’t seen Mayhew gently nudge Bennett’s arm and looked around at the other tables in the room.
“Is this the lab’s entire staff?” she asked.
“This is a skeleton crew,” Mayhew said. “Most of our colleagues are working in the field.”
“It must be a very large field,” she said in a lame attempt at humor.
There was deafening silence.
Finally, Mayhew showed his teeth.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” he said.
He glanced around at the others, who took his comment as a signal to force grins on their faces.
Gamay had the feeling that they were all connected to one another with wires and that Mayhew had the switch in his hand.
“I met another woman on the dock,” she said. “I believe her name was Dr. Lee.”
“Oh, yes, Dr. Song Lee,” Mayhew said. “I didn’t count her because she’s a visiting scientist and not regular staff. She’s extremely shy, and even dines in her cabin by herself.”
Chuck Hallum, who headed the immunology section, said,
“She’s Harvard educated, and one of the most brilliant immunologists I’ve ever met. Speaking of off islanders, what reallybrings you to Bonefish Key?”
“My interest in marine biology,” Gamay said. “I’ve read in the scientific journals about the groundbreaking work you’ve been doing in biomedicine. I was planning to visit friends in Tampa and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a firsthand look.”
“Are you familiar with the history of the marine center?” asked Mayhew.
“I understand that you’re a nonprofit funded by a foundation, but I don’t know much beyond that,” Gamay said.
Mayhew nodded. “When Dr. Kane started the lab, his initial funding came from the bequest of a University of Florida alumna who had lost a close relative to disease. There were some legal challenges to the will from disgruntled family members, and the funding was about to dry up when he formed a foundation and started attracting money from other sources. Dr. Kane envisioned Bonefish Key as the ideal research center because it would be away from the hubbub of a busy university.”