Ghost Key (11 page)

Then there was the fourth island, middle-class homes that were once a gated community and great, deep thickets of trees at the northern end. That was where Zee and his group lived, in the woods, on land that had been in his family for generations. His group was like a commune of gypsies, people coming and going all the time, some of them living in old rusted trailers, others living in tents, the women cooking outdoors, kids and dogs running wild around the camp. Zee’s Camp. That was how it was known on the island.

“What did the guys in the cart do when Liberty attacked them?”

Rocky laughed. “Got out of there very fast.”

“I’ll talk to Zee about it.”

“No, don’t, Mom. It’s no big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me.”

“This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you about it.” He sounded pissed. “I knew it would make you all paranoid.”

With that, he picked up his empty dishes and went inside. What the hell, she thought, and cleared the table and followed him into the kitchen. She set everything on the counter next to the sink. “You know what happened at the hotel that night, Rocky, with Bean and Marion. It was weird, okay? And there’s other strange stuff going on around here. I’m just asking you to be careful.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He rinsed his plates, put it all in the dishwasher. “I’m going over to Amy’s.”

Amy lived in one of the large homes along the runway. Her grandfather had invented the seat belt and they owned a Learjet that flew her dad to Atlanta a few times a week. She lived in another world altogether. “Have you noticed anything odd with her or her family?”

Rocky rolled his eyes, grabbed his pack, and headed for the door. “Nope. Nothing. See you tomorrow.”

“Hey, Rocky. Hold on a second.”

Another roll of the eyes, a huge, exaggerated sigh. Teenage bullshit, she thought, and got right in his face. “I told you what to look for. The dark, shiny eyes, the—”

“Christ, I get it. Really. There’s talk, Mom, a lot of talk about how … well, paranoid you’ve gotten. I understand you witnessed something weird in the hotel bar. Fine. But weird shit happens daily around here. It’s the nature of Cedar Key.”

Where the hell was
this
coming from? “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, Rocky. But until a few months ago, the kind of weird shit
I’m
talking about
never
happened here.” She dropped her hands to his shoulders. “Hey, look at me.”

At fifteen, he was her height, five foot ten, and when he met her gaze, she experienced a maternal time slippage:
Where did the years go?
She could still remember holding Rocky in her arms, reading him to sleep at night, tucking him in, trying to answer his questions about his absent father. Now he stood head to head with her, already had an iPod bud in one ear to block her out. She flicked the bud from his ear. “Listen closely, Rocky. Nothing on this island is what it seems. If Amy or someone else you care for has dark, glossy eyes, exhibits jerky movements and twitches, if their mouths seem to move out of synch with what they’re saying, then run fast in the opposite direction. Promise me you’ll do that.”

“Fuck.” He jerked away from her, stuck the iPod bud in his ear again. “You sound nutty, Mom. Honestly, that’s how you sound.”

“Promise me,” she snapped.

“Okay, okay, I promise. Are you closing up the bar tonight?”

“Yeah, I’ll be home after one.”

“I’ll be here,” he said, then moved swiftly past her, his body language screaming that he couldn’t get away from her quickly enough.

When she heard the sputter and gasps of his scooter pulling away from the houseboat, she opened the French doors to the back balcony. Liberty fluttered her wings and hit the empty bowl with her beak. It clattered against the floor. Then she made that high-pitched keening sound and took off after Rocky.

*   *   *

When
Kate stepped outside the houseboat at 8:20, a fog rolled off the back bayou, long, white ribbons of the stuff swirling across the surface of the water, making its way toward land. That was another thing that had changed on the island, she thought. Never, in all the years she’d lived here, had fog on Cedar Key been as frequent as it was now, coming in nearly every night, thick and strange, swelling like a tick until dawn. She decided to drive to work. The memory of walking home in the fog that night in February was much too vivid in her mind.

Kate walked briskly along the side of Richard Pinella’s house and was surprised to see the lights on. He had gone into work at the hotel bar at one this afternoon and wasn’t supposed to get off until she arrived. She rapped at his front door. “Hey, Rich,” she called. “It’s me.”

“Hold on,” he shouted.

Moments later, he opened the door, a towel wrapped around his waist, his curly black hair wet from the shower, water beaded on his muscular arms, his broad shoulders. He was a year older than she, and they had known each other since they were kids. He had gotten married right out of college, then divorced a few years later and returned to Cedar Key. His daughter, whom he rarely saw, lived in Boulder with her mother. Kate had never married Rocky’s dad and had sole custody of Rocky, but otherwise their lives had followed parallel tracks until the tracks had intersected last year.

“I thought you were working,” she said.

The flash of his smile, the way his hazel eyes undressed her in a single, swift glance, excited her. It had been weeks since they’d made love, weeks since they’d spent any quality time together. “I was. But late this afternoon, Bean asked me to help him move a boat to the marina on the other side of the island and the tide was out and we got stuck out there for a while.” He opened the door wider. “C’mon in. It’s chilly.”

Kate entered the house, he shut the door, and without another word, he slipped his arms around her, holding her close. He was several inches taller than she and her face fit perfectly into the curve of his shoulders. She breathed in the scent of his skin, of the soap he’d used, something new she didn’t recognize. It reminded her of autumn here on Cedar Key, when the wind brought in the salty odors of the marsh, of the mud flats that appeared at low tide, a masculine smell. His towel was new, too, fluffy and thick, a bold purple. Rich never bought new towels or new sheets. He prided himself on making do with what he had.

He slid his fingers through her hair, tilted her head back. “I’ve missed you, Katie-bird,” he whispered, and kissed her so passionately that she felt as if she were falling and stumbled back against the wall.

Then her hands moved of their own volition, tugging on his towel until it dropped away. He unzipped her jeans, rolled them down over her hips, and kissed his way from her mouth to her thighs. She gasped at the exquisite sensations that coursed through her, her senses burned with desire. She and Rich moved as though they were joined at the hips, lurching and stumbling until they fell onto the couch. When he slipped into her, her body arched, her nails sank into his back, her legs locked around him, and he thrust with a kind of fierceness that shocked her. In the time they had been lovers, he’d never made love to her like this, as though she were not only the focus of his intense desire, but his
only
desire.

At one point, Kate drew back, her hands at the sides of his face. “What?” she whispered. “What is it?”

His eyes seemed to darken and gloss over, as Bean’s had that February night when he’d come to the houseboat. She pressed her hands against his shoulders, pushing him back slightly so that she could see him better, see him outside the thick shadows that fell over this part of the couch. His eyes looked fine. Of course they did. She had imagined it.

“I’ve just missed you,” he said hoarsely, and brought his mouth to hers again and thrust on to his own completion.

Her desire turned to dust. She couldn’t help it. She lay beneath him for a few moments, then said, “Listen, I need to get to work. Bean will have a fit if I’m late. I’m already treading on thin ice with him.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

“I’m driving.”

“Can I hitch a ride with you?”

His eyes looked as they always did, a pale, almost transparent blue, and she wondered what was wrong with her. Ever since that night in February, she’d been suspicious of everyone, even Rich. Maybe her son was right that she was overly paranoid. She resolved to be more trusting.

*   *   *

The
two buses from Georgia pulled up to the hotel ten minutes after Kate and Rich arrived at work. The buses held several dozen tourists headed for Disney World tomorrow morning. Tourists meant business and business meant tips and tips meant she would be able to stash away more money toward Rocky’s car.

The hotel courtyard overflowed with people, the dining room and bar were jammed. Bean took over the front desk and assigned Maddie to the courtyard with Kate and told Rich to cover the inside bar with one of the waitresses from the dining room. The place teemed with people, adults, kids of all ages, a madhouse.

The younger kids ran wild through the courtyard until Maddie herded them into the lobby, turned on the DVD player, and popped in a Harry Potter movie. They were short on chairs in the courtyard and Kate headed for the old barracks with a flashlight to look for additional chairs. She caught sight of a black dog slinking along the fence, where the shadows were deepest, but it fled before she could approach it. It must’ve gotten in through the open courtyard gate. Or by digging under one of the fences. Cedar Key had a lot of stray cats and dogs, drawn here for many of the same reasons that humans were—the isolation, the live-and-let-live attitude, and the fact that the residents fed the strays.

Kate opened the creaking door of the barracks and slipped inside. It was one of the creepiest spots, a kind of postscript tucked back at the edge of the property, shrouded on three sides by tall weeds. It supposedly had been a general store in the 1860s and had also housed both Confederate and Union soldiers. Now it just stank of mold and rotting wood, was infested with cockroaches and ants, and she wondered when Bean would get around to renovating it.

She found more chairs in what had been the kitchen and noticed candles and dried wax on the old wooden table. Weird. Who would bother coming in here with candles to sit around the table? Maybe some of the hotel employees came in after the bar closed to tip a few.

She carried two chairs out onto the porch, went back inside for more. This time, the beam of her flashlight caught a partially open cabinet door under the sink. She opened it all the way, expecting to see a trash bin filled with beer and wine bottles. Instead, she found rags that stank of lighter fluid or gasoline, a box of kitchen matches with spent matches inside, and a trash can jammed with all kinds of stuff—empty pizza boxes and Chinese takeout containers, empty soda cans, water and beer bottles, more rags, and wadded paper. She plucked out one piece of paper, smoothed it open against the counter. Just four words were printed on it: “Yes, annihilation by fire.”

“What the hell,” she murmured, and fished out the other wads of paper, six in all. As she smoothed open each one, she heard the door open.

“Kate? You in here?”

Maddie. Kate shoved the pieces of paper into her jacket pocket. “Yeah, back here, Maddie. I found another dozen chairs.”

The pretty young woman hurried in with a dim flashlight, her wild red hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, strands curling at her temples. “It’s crazy out there. The dining room is, like, totally jammed, so more people are coming into the courtyard to eat. And the kids are bored with Harry Potter.”

“There’re more movies in the storage room. Maybe
Lady and the Tramp
would suit them. Or
Narnia.
Or
The Golden Compass.”

“Wow.
The Golden Compass
. I mean, that movie blew me away, you know?”

Kate nodded. “I know people who wouldn’t let their kids see that movie when they found out the author is an atheist.”

“What?” Maddie squealed and wrinkled her nose. “Are you kidding me?” Then she rubbed her hands together and blew into them to warm them. “So what should I grab here?”

Kate gestured at the chairs. “They’re dusty and rusted, but they’ll have to do.” She drew Maddie’s attention to the candles. “You guys coming in here after hours to drink?”

“Me?” Maddie pressed her thumb to her chest. “When I leave here, I go home and crash. Maybe it’s the kitchen help.” She stacked several chairs and pulled them through the kitchen and out the door, holding it open with her foot. “We’ve got a dozen of these tourists staying here tonight and a few dozen more staying over on Dock Street at the B and Bs. But they all want to eat breakfast here in the morning and Bean says we’re to be back here at six-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“I’m a bartender,” Kate remarked, following Maddie through the open door. “I’m not sure that even double time would get me back here at that hour.”

Maddie laughed. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

They got the chairs outside and two of the waiters dispersed them among the tables. Kate eyed the crowd—large and loud, but not boisterous and rowdy like the customers in the bar that night in February. The difference was subtle, but she knew it was important. Wisps of fog swirled into the courtyard, but stayed low to the ground, twisting like pale vines across the tiles.

“Hey, Maddie, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Have you noticed anything weird about the locals lately?”

The young woman looked at Kate, her expression a complete blank, her body utterly still, unmoving. It was as if she’d turned into a mannequin, eyes wide, unblinking, staring, limbs frozen. Kate couldn’t even say for sure if she was breathing. Seconds later, she became animated again, mouth twitching into a half smile, hands fiddling with her ponytail. “I haven’t really been here long enough to know what’s weird and what isn’t. Can you be more specific?”

It was as if she’d had a ministroke during that moment of utter stillness; that was how strikingly different she was right now. “You heard about the incident in the bar in February, didn’t you?”