J.M.J.

Author's note: Thank you for reading! Special thanks to all of you leaving reviews! The next chapter will be September 22. God bless!

September 17 – Sunday

Early Sunday morning, Chet was hanging up what looked something like a windchime made of coconut shells outside the cabin. Tony was just coming outside and gave Chet a puzzled look, unsure whether he was more confused by the contraption that Chet was affixing to the outside of their door or by the fact that Chet was awake this early.

"What's this?" Tony asked.

"It's a big surprise," Chet announced proudly. "Remember you said that if I could figure out a church bell, then you'd use it?"

Tony raised an eyebrow skeptically. "That's a church bell?"

"Well, maybe not a bell, exactly," Chet admitted, "but it does make noise and it is better than just yelling for everybody to come to church."

Tony wasn't convinced that a bunch of coconuts clanking together would be preferable to simply calling for everyone to gather, but he didn't say so. However, he didn't need to. An hour or so later, when Chet began clanging it to gather everyone up, there were quite a few comments.

"What is that?" Biff objected.

"It sounds like a whole bunch of those knights in Monty Python," Joe joked.

"It's the new church bell," Chet explained. "You know, so Tony doesn't have to just yell at all of us when he's ready to start church."

"Oh." Frank nodded slowly and skeptically. "That's definitely the most unique church bell I've ever heard."

"You see?" Chet asked the others with a smug look. "It's a great bell."

Biff shook his head. "I don't know. It's never going to replace the Liberty Bell." Then he grinned. "Just picture it: Independence Hall with a string of coconuts hanging out in front."

"But they'd all have to be cracked," Joe added with a grin of his own.

Chet folded his arms. "Hilarious, guys, but the Liberty Bell isn't a church bell."

"Oh, right, sorry," Joe replied, although he continued to grin. "That's definitely the biggest difference here."

Whatever the boys thought of the "bell," Katina was fascinated with it. She had been eying it the entire time the boys were needling Chet about it, and she picked this moment to grab the string and start ringing it.

"There we have it," Chet said, gesturing to Katina. "The one person on the island—besides myself—with any taste or vision."

"You mean, the one person on the island who has possibly never seen a real bell before," Biff teased him.

"Okay, guys," Tony interjected. "Katina has a point. Let's get to church instead of standing around and insulting Chet's…windchime."

"Hey!" Chet protested.

He pretended to grumble and sulk as they started walking to the place where they usually held their church services. Phil had been standing not far away, and he trotted a few steps to catch up to Tony.

"Say, Tony, could I talk to you for just a second?" he asked.

"Sure. You guys go on ahead. I'll be right there," Tony directed the others, who had also stopped. After they had continued on, he turned to Phil. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

"No, I just wanted to thank you for yesterday." The day before, the castaways had had as much of a festive meal as their limited food options allowed. They had asked if there were any other traditions they could observe, but besides the prohibition on working, Phil told them that there were none. He did, however, tell them a bit about the traditional customs of the holiday.

Tony shrugged. "I know it wasn't a traditional Rosh Hashanah meal."

"It was the best we could do, and it wouldn't have been anything if you hadn't convinced me to come around," Phil said. "I really do appreciate it."

"It's fine," Tony assured him.

"And if you don't mind, I'll join you guys this morning."

Tony nodded and smiled a little. "I don't think any of us would mind in the least."

HBNDHBNDHB

Twilight was falling and Fenton was sitting in a car outside a little bar in a small Mexican town. It didn't look much like such towns did in movies. In fact, it didn't look much different than any small town in the southwestern United States. There was noisy music coming out of the bar, but otherwise it was a quiet place. The evening was still hot, and Fenton was getting a bit drowsy. Finally, he opened the door and stepped out of his car. From the way things looked, Gaspar Santana wouldn't be coming out of that bar anytime soon.

Fenton walked down past the line of cars parked in front. There weren't as many as there were patrons inside, since most of the people who lived in this town were within easy walking distance, but there was still a large assortment. Santana's car was there, of course. Fenton had followed it here. It was the only new car in the bunch, and most of the others were probably more than twenty years old. It wasn't an upper-class bar, but that was Santana's style. Cheap beer, crude conversations, and the type of women who only required a lot of money to impress them seemed to be his only sources of entertainment. He probably was finding all three inside. He'd be here all night.

Fenton turned over what he had learned in the last few weeks in his mind as he continued walking and absently noting the parked cars. Since returning to Mexico, he hadn't learned much. The Mexican authorities had been glad to have his help again, and they had quickly put him on Santana's trail once more when they heard about the clues that Fenton had found in Montana. Or rather that had been planted for him in Montana. Carson had called him and told him the results of his and Nancy's search for the phony Roger Stanley, otherwise known as Chris Hammon. Fenton wasn't sure if he believed the agent's story, but he didn't utterly discount it either. Deep cover, involvement of the Witness Protection Plan which included a witness being captured by the very people he was going to testify against, and division within the Bureau could explain Fenton's exclusion from the case. However, he didn't like being tricked and he didn't like the idea of Hammon blatantly disregarding orders because he had a difference of opinion with his superiors. The man might have helped Fenton this time—whether he really did or not remained to be seen—but he wasn't a man whom Fenton would trust to turn his back on.

He was still walking when the music from the bar suddenly became louder as the door opened. Fortunately, Fenton was already in the shadows of a building down the street and he was able to get to an alley without being seen. He saw two men come outside, and the light from inside fell on their faces just long enough for Fenton to identify one as Gaspar Santana. The man had an angry look about his face and a whine in his tone which told Fenton that he wasn't pleased about being interrupted in his drinking. Fenton wondered who the other man was. He hadn't just gone inside to fetch Santana, so something must have happened in there to draw them both out. This other man was older, with graying hair and a hard, weathered face. They were speaking in soft tones and Fenton couldn't make out what they were saying past the music, yet he had the impression that it was the older man who had pulled Santana out of the bar.

They only spoke for a couple of minutes. Then they parted company. Santana went to his own vehicle, while the other man started walking toward Fenton. Still hidden in the shadows, Fenton held his ground. He didn't think the man could see him in the gloom, but him might notice a movement if Fenton tried to pull back into the cover of the alley. As the man came closer, he also passed into the shadows, and the only indications that he was there were his footsteps and the hint of movement that Fenton could just make out.

A moment later, the suspect opened the door of a pick-up that was parked a few yards away from Fenton and the dome light came on, giving Fenton a good look at the man's face. Fenton scrutinized him closely, committing every detail of his face to memory. Now that he saw him more closely, Fenton thought he might not be as old as he had thought at first. The hardness in his face had made him look older. There was something else in his face as well: a look of complete misery, as if he was in pain every moment. Fenton wondered briefly whether he was ill or if it was simply the pangs of a strangled conscience making a few last, feeble protests at being party to whatever crimes the man was involved in. If he was a confederate of Santana, there was a high probability that there was something for his conscience to protest about.

Fenton didn't take much time in those considerations. It wasn't his job to analyze why a person might have committed a crime or whether they were sorry for it, but simply to determine whether they had done it. The man was in his pick-up now and had turned on the ignition, causing the dome lights to turn off but the headlights to come on. Fenton backed into the alley. If those headlights hit him, he would be seen for sure. He wished he would have stayed in his own car so that he could follow one or the other of the suspects, but it was too late now. Instead, all he could do was try to note everything he could about the pick-up as it pulled away. He made out the license number in the glow from the headlights and had the impression that, like most of the other vehicles parked here, this was an old pick-up.

Once it was out of sight, Fenton returned to his car and called his contact with the Mexican authorities, requesting that the license number be checked. It only took a minute or two for the information to come back: the license was for a 1987 Toyota registered to Pavel Morales. His contact also gave Morales's address, which was in town. Fenton put his car in gear and started driving toward the address, but he had only been driving a short time when the realization struck him that the make and model of Morales's pick-up had already come up in his investigation. The keys that he had found up by that lake in Montana had belonged to a pick-up that matched that exactly. Fenton wondered if, by any chance, those keys could have belonged to that exact vehicle. If they did, then that was a link between the cartel and the Hawaiian gang that couldn't have been planted. It also would mean that Pavel Morales was involved in at least one of the multiple assassinations committed by these criminal organizations.

It took less than five minutes to drive to Morales's address. Fenton parked across the street and watched the little one-story house carefully. The lights were all out. There was no garage, and the pick-up hadn't appeared in the driveway. It appeared that Morales hadn't gone straight home from the bar.

Fenton got out of his car and approached the house, watching carefully for any sign of a security camera. He went around to the back, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves as he did. Once he was in back, he tried the back door. It was unlocked. Fenton crept inside.

He didn't dare turn on any of the overhead lights or use a strong flashlight that could be noticed from outside. Instead, he only used a small keychain flashlight that he sheltered with his hand.

If Morales was part of a criminal gang, he certainly didn't seem to use his money for any comforts in his house. The floor and walls were bare and the furniture was sparse and old. The house itself only had three rooms, with a kitchen, a bathroom, and a room with a bed, a desk, a sofa, and a TV old enough to still have rabbit-ear antennae sticking out of it. At least it made it easy to search the place quickly. Fenton went to the desk first. There was nothing on top of it but a desk lamp, a few pencils, and a laptop. Cautiously, he lifted the lid of the laptop. There was no PIN to get into it, and so Fenton was able to look at the contents without any trouble.

There was no WiFi connection, but there was a plethora of files to search through. Evidently, Morales had been using the same laptop for nearly fifteen years, because not only did many of the files go back that far, but the operating system was also Windows XP. Fenton clicked on one of the files from 2011 and waited while the computer struggled to open it. It was a WordPad file and when it was finally open, it looked like a garbled mess. However, after staring at it for a few seconds, Fenton could see that complete and unencoded words were present between the meaningless strings of letters and symbols. He pulled a pencil and a pad of paper out of his pocket and began jotting them down so that he could make sense out of it.

When he finished, he quickly read through the message again: Contract w/DR—fill by 3/28—disposal MT if needed—payment w/POD—terms: cash, USD. Fenton clicked on another file and found that it contained a similar message. He checked several more files, and they had different dates, different initials for the person putting out the contract, and different notes on disposal, but they were similar enough to make it clear what Morales did for a living. The only hint that any of these had to do with the Hawaiian gang was the note about "disposal MT". All of these listed "DR" as the person putting out the contract. He tried to think whether anyone with those initials had been involved in the case.

While he was thinking through that, he decided he had better leave before Morales returned. There was enough here to call for the police to get involved. Once the laptop was in the hands of the authorities, any other secrets it contained would be revealed, and it didn't look like there was any danger of Morales deleting or hiding anything. As Fenton was heading back across the street to his car, it suddenly occurred to him that the initials DR had turned up. But that couldn't be the person meant. Or could it?