An Interview with Kait Carson By E. B. Davis

 

A family scuba vacation. A dropped bit of equipment. Has the famous Blue Hole of Belize claimed another life?

Hayden Kent has more riding on the answer to the mystery than curiosity. She believes the diver faked his death. As a paralegal and newly minted claims investigator, it’s her job to decide if her company pays out the thirty-million-dollar policy. When her trip to Belize uncovers evidence of fraud, she returns to her beloved Florida Keys and digs deeper into the dead man’s affairs. Her boss’s advice to follow the money sends her to the Cayman Islands where privacy is king, and secrets can be deadly. Hayden’s inquiries put her in the cross-hairs of a killer who will stop at nothing to claim the thirty million. Can she prove the dead man lives before she ends up as shark bait?

Death Dive is the third book in the Hayden Kent mystery series. If you like fast-paced suspense that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go, then you’ll love this series. Underwater, no one hears you scream.

Amazon.com 

WWK’s Kait Carson released the third book in the Hayden Kent mystery series yesterday. The first two books in this series, Death By Blue Water and Death By Sunken Treasure, can be downloaded from Kindle Unlimited. Although the third book, Death Dive, is a great stand alone, reading the previous two books will show major changes main character Hayden Kent has undergone in her immediate past.

 

By the end of the book, I knew two things. Hayden can trust her two female friends in law enforcement and her cat, Tiger, who literally has her back!

 

Welcome to the flip side of WWK, Kait!                                                              E. B. Davis

 

What’s a dive computer? How often do they get tested?

Besides being one of my favorite things, a dive computer is similar to a one-stop-shop visual record of your dive. Mine is air integrated, so it attaches to my tank via an air hose. That feature allows the computer to keep track of the air in my tank, my dive time, how much longer I can stay submerged within the recreational limits and other items. It also records my depth, and my rate of ascent. After my dive it will let me know my surface interval (the time between dives). A very handy gadget. Divers must remember that it is a gadget. For true dive safety, never rely on your computer, but refer to the dive tables for safety.

 

Computers should be serviced annually at an authorized dive shop.

 

What did Jacques Cousteau do to the Belize Blue Hole? Who allowed him to do it? In 1971 Cousteau and his team brought the Calypso to Belize. The limestone “wall” that surrounded the Blue Hole had openings too small to admit the Calypso. Cousteau used dynamite to widen the opening. History is silent about permission, but Cousteau later claimed it was one of his ten favorite dives.

 

Why are inexperienced divers air hogs? Excitement. It’s a gorgeous and breathtaking world under the sea!

 

How hard is it to get a person declared dead by the courts without a body? I thought there was a seven-year waiting period. Not hard, but it is a court process. The statutory wait in Florida is five years. That gap can create additional hardship for loved ones who are already grappling with their loss. If there is good reason to believe a missing person is dead, a suggestion of death can be filed. The court will look at the evidence and can declare the person dead. This not only provides closure to the family, but allows insurance claims to proceed and begins the probate process.

Why would Mallory ask Hayden to stay for a meeting with the deceased family? Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest especially now that Hayden thinks the man faked his death? Why did Hayden stay? Mallory hoped Hayden would be able to answer any questions the family might have about the dive and knew her friend would keep an open mind. Hayden understood that without further investigation, her belief that Joe was alive was little more than a “gut” feeling.

 

How did Hayden get the job with Luis, her boss, who is an attorney for the insurance company? What does Hayden do there? Hayden is a paralegal. In her previous job, she handled probate – the process of settling decedent’s estates. At her new job, Hayden is training as an investigator, and she is a working paralegal responsible for the drafting and filing of legal pleadings, and reviewing policies and claims.

 

I found myself questioning Hayden and Mallory’s friendship. Mallory and her boss, Ed, tried to use Hayden. Then Mallory becomes angry with Hayden for doing her job. Why does Hayden put up with that behavior? Hayden and Mallory have been best friends forever. They are also each other’s devil’s advocates. They’ve worked together in the past. Now that Hayden’s role has changed and they are on different sides of the same case, they need to find their footing. As Hayden tells Luis, “We’ve known each other forever. We argue, don’t talk for a while, but we always have each other’s back. No matter what.”

 

What is well-known diver and author Kurt Milan doing in Belize? He’s been hired by clients to shoot a documentary of the Blue Hole. For all that is known about the Hole, there are many unanswered questions. Cousteau and his men did not get to the bottom, but they did determine that much of the structure was formed above ground and gradually submerged. The bottom of the Hole was not reached until 2018. The information discovered changed much of what we thought we knew about the Hole, and required a significant rewrite of Death Dive.

 

What is bad air? Air that is somehow contaminated with something, often carbon dioxide. It can occur innocently, the fill station too near a source of engine exhaust, but can be fatal. In specialty diving, it can be a poorly prepared gas mix that creates a safety hazard.

 

Hayden is almost left behind by the boat while she is still diving. Does that happen often? What system do they use to prevent that from happening? Not often, but unfortunately, it does happen. One of the most famous cases was depicted in the 2004 film Open Water. Dive boats use various methods to try to prevent a missing diver. Most common are sign in boards and roll calls. Less common are token boards where the diver takes a token before the dive and replaces it on the board when they return.

 

What is a safety sausage? Ah, ye olde safety sausage! They are three to six foot plastic tubes, usually bright orange, that the diver can inflate from their air supply or by blowing it up manually. I have often thought if the diver could manually inflate a safety sausage, they had the lung capacity to get back to shore! When not in use, the sausage rolls up and is secured by a clip to a dive vest. When a diver surfaces far from the dive boat, the best thing to do is get that sausage in the air. It makes you visible to your boat and can keep you from getting run over.

 

Why don’t rebreathers give off bubbles? I always thought of them as breath recycling machines. A diver’s exhale is returned to the device where scrubbers clean the carbon dioxide and recycle it back to the diver to rebreathe. Not only do they not produce bubbles—they’re silent. Spooky stuff.

 

Why are divers fascinated by other divers’ deaths? That varies by the individual, of course. As is common in most extreme sports, tragedies and near misses serve as learning experiences.

 

What differentiates recreational divers from technical divers? Not too much! Recreational divers use air in their tanks and stay at shallower depths. Technical divers use mixed gases depending on the dive and regularly end dives with decompression.

 

Why did Hayden try a risky dive she wasn’t qualified to make? Was her ego too engaged? Yes indeed. She was foolish and should have known better. To be honest, I tried to tell her. She insisted.

 

Can employees be personally sued for actions they took while on the job? In the legal world they can. As a paralegal I carried both errors and omissions insurance and liability insurance. It’s a scary world!

 

Hayden is a bit clumsy, isn’t she? She has her moments! I think she gets that from me!

 

After being shot at, Hayden is suspicious of everyone, even Luis. Has she become paranoid? No, not paranoid. Being shot at made her take a step back and dive deeply into the people involved in the case. One of her favorite tools is to create a mind-mapping chart of relationships. In this case, everyone had a personal connection to the decedent and Luis attempted to conceal his.

 

What’s next for Hayden? Hayden is at a crossroads. The past few years have been difficult. She’s changed jobs, but not professions, her heart is in the law and she always intended to attend law school. The pandemic threw a hitch in her plans, and now she’s trying to find her way.

 

Thank you for inviting me to the other side of WWK! This has been fun. Great questions, Elaine.