Free The Rhythm of the August Rain by Gillian Royes Page A

noticed those drums in the back.” She closed her notebook. “Do you play them?”
    â€œSometimes. But my son play better than me. He teach drumming.”
    After taking photographs of the shoemaker over his metal repair boot and beside the flag, Shannon walked back to the car. She had a lot to think about, she realized, a lot more research to do, including beginning to look into Katlyn’s disappearance.
    â€œDo either of you know where Gordon Gap is?” she asked Carlton and Shad when they were under way. The two men discussed the location and decided that, no, it wasn’t Gordon Town near Kingston, and, yes, it must be the village in the hills above Oracabessa, about thirty miles west of Largo.
    â€œYou know somebody up there?” Shad wanted to know.
    â€œNo, but I want to make some inquiries.”
    â€œWe finish for the day?” Carlton asked.
    â€œYes, all done,” Shannon said. “Shad, would you like to have lunch with me?”
    â€œSure, man, like how my kitchen at home cold now.”
    Before Carlton left them at Lambert’s, Shannon arranged to pay him weekly, and he agreed to pick her up at ten the next morning. All was quiet in the Delgados’ house when she and Shad walked in, only the wooden floors creaking under them in the midday warmth. Bertha was in the kitchen polishing silver, the chocolate Lab stretched out on the cool tiles beside her.
    â€œMiss Jennifer take the children to Carel Beach to swim and Eve gone with them,” Bertha reported. “You hungry?”
    While she was making their lunch, the housekeeper talked about her own daughter, who’d been a teenager when Shannon had seen her last. “She working in a hospital in Baltimore, doing nursing. She making plenty money. I don’t see her for three years now.”
    â€œDon’t you miss her?” Shannon asked.
    The woman looked up in surprise. “Every month she send money for me to build my own house—it worth the missing.” Bertha laid out the lunch and left them in the kitchen.
    â€œThis morning—it was helpful to you?” Shad bit into his tuna sandwich.
    â€œA good start, but there’s so much history and philosophy behind the whole Rasta thing, I hope I can do it justice. There’s a big difference between reading about it and talking to Rastas in person, you know.”
    â€œOne interview at a time, right?”
    â€œIt’s more complicated than that, though. There’s something else I need to be doing at the same time.”
    â€œJust let me know and I tell Carlton to take us there.”
    Shannon set down her sandwich. “Remember I asked about Gordon Gap? That’s my other reason for being here.”
    â€œWhat you mean?”
    â€œI’m looking for—something happened to a Canadian woman over thirty years ago and my editor wants me to find out what happened to her. She came down to Jamaica to learn about the music and dance here. She was my editor’s friend, and from what Angie—that’s my editor—says, she was a sweet woman, in her late twenties, who was a bit naive, kind of idealistic. She came from a poor family and went to college on a scholarship, majoring in fine arts—that means like painting and dance and so on. Angie said she was really caring, always had a stray dog or cat she was taking care of, a good-hearted person. Before she came down to Jamaica, she was working in a store that sold dance clothes and she was teaching modern dance in a studio in Toronto. She’d always loved reggae music, and she started talking about coming to Jamaica to learn more about the dances down here. Her plan was to go back to Toronto and teach them.”
    â€œHow she disappeared?” Shad narrowed his eyes.
    â€œAngie doesn’t know, and I could only find two brief newspaper articles in the Globe about her disappearance—about the disappearance of her body from a hospital morgue.