book pages

1. THE DEAD CAME
KNOCKING
ISLAND MYSTERIES
BOOK 1
IB MEYER

2. Book Cover
Painting by Susan Mains – Grenada (used with permission)
Cover Design by Lindsay Heider Diamond - USA
The Dead Came Knocking © Copyright <<2023>> Ib Meyer
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This is a work of !ction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either
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For more information, email IslandMysteriesWestIndies@gmail.com

3. In Memory of Per Høvik Meyer
Beloved Father, Traveler, Seaman

5. “Accept the things to which fate binds you,
and love the people with whom fate brings you together,
but do so with all your heart.”
-Marcus Aurelius

7. T
CHAPTER 1
THE KNOCKING
he slight and dispersed orange rays of sunlight
were coming through my open bow hatch. The
breeze was gentle but brisk, and the subdued
knocking on the portside hull of my yacht, which I had been
patiently ignoring for the last thirty minutes in the predawn
!rst light, had !nally gotten on my last nerve.
I slipped o" the bunk, padded naked on my bare feet
through the cabin, up the companion way to the cockpit,
where I reached out and unclipped my dry swim suit from
the life lines. While I was doing this, I was wishing I had
stopped in the galley !rst to make co"ee, as was my habit.
“Too late now, Sten. Just check it out !rst,” I mumbled to
myself. I slipped the swim suit on, hopped out of the cockpit
onto the side deck, and grappled my way forward to see what
had woken me up. Having been woken from my sleep and
missing the energy of co"ee, my mood was quickly souring.
I had been in Prickly Bay, Grenada for two weeks on a
mooring ball, and all had been peaceful and calm. No issues
at all. Now there was this unexpected, gentle thudding on the
1

8. THE DEAD CAME KNOCKING
portside. It was sailing after all, and just about everything that
you pray will never happen? Well, it happens, and that
included knockings on the hull in the early morning.
As I approached the bow I could see my two lines were
still securely attached to the mooring ball, keeping my
position steady relative to land based points of reference I
had noticed on the day I attached to the mooring. Everything
looked okay. The mooring ball had not come loose, and my
lines were still taut. Nothing had moved. Grasping ahold of
one of the portside stanchions with my outstretched right
hand, I got on my knees then on to my belly, and I worked my
way over the edge of the deck with my left hand to peer down
below. It didn’t take me long to discover the cause of the
knocking.
Naked feet and legs were gently undulating in the water,
and as I leaned over more, the body of a mostly unclothed
woman, her red under garments still intact, was lying
alongside my boat. A red dress was gathered around her waist
with a long piece of it snagged on the mooring ball line. She
was face down, with what looked like red/black hair
extensions splayed out in the water like a veil, and her head
was rhythmically knocking on the hull.
I slowly brought myself up to a sitting position on deck,
leaning up against the stanchion I had grasped, and I sighed.
The gentle lapping of the waves on my hull, punctuated with
the dampened knock was almost musical.
There was a gentle hum as the cool morning breeze blew
through my lines and rigging causing a gentle whirr to sound
in the wind vane on a neighboring yacht. The pounding of
my heart and the ever increasing light as the sun rose were
my company as I decided what to do. As a child growing up
in Africa and as a former sergeant of a Sheri!'s O"ce in
Colorado, now serving as a sergeant in the reserves, I was no
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