Colorful acrylic abstracts, several dozen of them, charting the lives of not only Rice, but President Bush, Barbara Bush, Bill Clinton ("Look, he's got all these women's clothes on his face, but I love the man," she says), Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela, Colin Powell, even Wolf Blitzer - her primary link, via satellite, to the outside world.
(Rather than me delivering Rice's abstract, I encourage Nettie to come to Washington and make a formal presentation at the State Department. She smiles and hugs me twice with her big arms.)
The trip by boat to secluded Green Turtle Cay lasts 20 minutes. There to welcome me is Bluff House Beach Hotel general manager Peter W. Curtis, the former Davis Cup tennis star from Britain.
If that comes as any surprise, imagine how I felt that night when, after we'd downed several "Tranquil Turtles," Curtis informed me that his ex-wife and the mother of his children, Emily Marks-Curtis, was President Bush's girlfriend when he supposedly reported for National Guard duty in Alabama in 1972.
"I couldn't believe this past campaign," he tells me. "I was in Barbados, where I previously managed a property, and a reporter for the London Times . . . actually tracked me down and began asking me questions about Bush and his National Guard service."
(Mrs. Marks-Curtis' most memorable line during the 2004 campaign: "Although I never actually drove him to Guard duty, he told me that he went.")
Next stop, Elbow Cay. Only a few hundred souls live on the island, so I stashed my reporter's notebook and climbed to the top of the Hope Town Lighthouse, built in 1863. (One of the few beacons in the world saved from automation, locals here go to great lengths to secure parts for the kerosene-burning beacon.)
And while in Hope Town, why not duck into the Wyannie Malone Museum to learn about the island's rich colonial history.
"Where are you from?" inquires Ray Brown, collecting my entrance fee from behind his small wooden desk.
"Washington - D.C.," I stress, so he doesn't confuse it with the state.
"Oh, my," he says. "I recently sold my place in Dupont Circle - sold two of them, actually. Until I retired here recently, I had a production company there - documentaries mostly. You might be interested to know that I videotaped Bill Clinton's (Monica Lewinsky) deposition."