Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide (12 page)

Isabel said, “Tell me about Edward.”

He drew a long breath. “That’s tough to do.”

“I know, but he’s on your mind.”

He put down his mug and contemplated the bay. “Edward was my only child. He was nearly thirteen years old when he died. He was a very, very smart kid. All the tests, everything. Off the charts. But for some reason that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted him to do something physical, some kind of sport, instead of sitting in a room reading all the time. Although, when I look back on it, not many kids get killed sitting in rooms reading, do they?”

“Clem—”

“Let me tell it, Okay?” He was looking past her, squinting into the morning glare. “I always liked to swim. For years, I’d been a recreational scuba diver. Edward liked to swim, too, so I urged him to get certified and we’d go diving together. And he did, and we did.”

Clem pushed his chair back. He stood and went to lean on a nearby railing. After a moment he continued: “I keep telling myself Edward liked diving, that he didn’t do it just for me, but the fact remains that it was my idea. The other fact remains— when the time came, I couldn’t save him.”

“What happened?”

“One of those things.” He bit off the words. “We were diving one day. We’d cooked up kind of a historical research project, and—”

“Historical research?”

“Underwater archaeology, you might call it.” He waved it away. “It was a dumb idea. Anyway, we were diving. The water was murky. I lost sight of Edward for a minute. He’d dislodged some debris on the bottom and gotten pinned down. He panicked. By the time I realized what was happening, he’d spit out his mouthpiece. I tried to get him free, but it was confusing down there, and he was scared, struggling. It was over practically before I knew it. I dragged him to the surface, got him in the boat. I radioed for help and did mouth-to-mouth, but it was too late.”

He picked a red pepper off the plant beside him, inspected it, tossed it in the water. “Sometimes I dream I’m still giving him mouth-to-mouth,” he said. “I wake up hyperventilating.”

Isabel didn’t know what to say. She wouldn’t assure him that someday it would be all right. She didn’t see how it ever could be.

Echoing her thought, he said, “Eve wants me to carry on, be the way I was before. I can’t.”

“She wants you not to blame yourself.”

“Correct. But whose fault was it, if it wasn’t mine?” He straightened. “I’m sorry for talking about my troubles. You’re the bereaved one now.”

“I asked you.”

“And I’ve told you.” He looked around for the waiter. “We’d better get back. Can you stop by the office in the next couple of days? The will is pretty straightforward, but there are some papers to sign.”

“The will?”

He gave her a quizzical look. “Miss Merriam’s will.”

My goods and chattels are none of yours.
“Merriam disinherited me. Years ago.”

He mused briefly. “Oh yeah, I guess she did, back when my father was still handling her affairs. That didn’t last more than a couple of years. No, she left everything to you. It’s all yours, no strings attached.”

***

Isabel turned in under the cabbage palms and bumped down the driveway. The house— her house— sat among the scrub and weeds, bedraggled and forlorn. She was going to have to deal with the place after all.

But not right now. Right now she had a duty to perform. She parked the car and walked back to the beach. She found Kimmie Dee near the water’s edge.

“I have something to tell you, Kimmie Dee,” she said.

Kimmie Dee followed Isabel to a blackened driftwood log and perched next to her. Isabel said, “I have sad news. Merriam died this morning. You were her friend, and I wanted you to know.”

The girl’s head drooped. She said, “You mean really dead? Not just real sick?”

“No. She’s dead.”

Kimmie Dee scooped up handfuls of loose sand and dribbled them over her bare feet. After a while, she said, “Was she scared?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Miss Merriam used to tell me she wasn’t scared to go. She said when the call came, she’d be ready.”

That sounded like Merriam. Isabel said, “Well, the call came and she went.”

Overhead, gulls wheeled and cried. Kimmie Dee’s feet were nearly covered with sand. “You’re sure she wasn’t scared?” The point seemed to bother her.

“There’s no reason to think so.”

Kimmie Dee wiggled her toes and most of the sand slid away. “I guess he didn’t get her, then, because she was sure scared of him,” she said.

Isabel wasn’t sure she’d understood. “Who didn’t get her?”

“The man in the hood didn’t get Miss Merriam.”

Isabel had been picking at the crumbling wood of the log. Her fingers stopped moving. “What are you talking about, Kimmie Dee?”

“That day. She was scared of the man in the hood. She told me to watch out.”

“You mean the day you found her on the beach? The day she got sick?”

“Yes.”

The surface of the log was spongy, dry wood flaking off in her hand. “Why didn’t you mention the man in the hood before?”

“Because I’m scared of him, too.” Kimmie Dee stretched toward Isabel’s ear and whispered, “I’ve got his picture.”

Isabel waited until she thought she could sound casual. “You have a picture of the man in the hood?”

“Yes. In my room.”

“Do you think— would you mind getting it, so I can see?”

“Okay.” She jumped up and ran, sand spurting out behind her. Isabel kept her eyes on the diminishing figure with its flying hair. Something had happened to Merriam, after all. Something real. The event was hidden, its outlines obscured, but it was there.

When the girl came back, she was carrying a large floppy book. “Here it is,” she said.

Isabel took the book. It was a Halloween coloring book with a lurid cover depicting a monster emerging from a crypt. The title was
Ghouls, Goblins, ’n’ Ghosts.
She leafed through it. A halfhearted attempt had been made to color some of the monsters and haunted houses, but most of the pages were untouched. “Here it is,” said Kimmie Dee. She pointed to a picture of a skeleton wearing a hooded robe and carrying a lantern, standing among tombstones in an overgrown graveyard. “That’s him,” Kimmie Dee said. “The man in the hood. That’s the one she was scared of, isn’t it?”

So much for easy answers. A hearty voice behind them said, “What are you two doing? Having a coloring party?”

Isabel felt Kimmie Dee, sitting beside her, stiffen. She turned and saw Ted Stiles standing over them, looking with interest at the coloring book open on Isabel’s knees. He was wearing his usual black slacks and white shirt, with the large many-dialed black watch on his wrist and a package of Marlboros showing through his breast pocket. His black leather shoes were hardly appropriate for a stroll on the beach, and Isabel assumed he had followed Kimmie Dee from the house.

With frost in her tone, Isabel said, “I was telling Kimmie Dee that my aunt died last night.”

His face fell. “She did? Now, that’s a shame. I’m so sorry.” He settled into a relaxed stance and began digging in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. “Did she ever remember what happened to her?”

“Not really.”

He bent and studied the picture of the hooded skeleton. “Oo! That’s ugly! Are you going to color that picture, Kimmie Dee?”

Kimmie Dee’s face was turned away from him. She said faintly, “No.”

In an even more ingratiating tone, he said, “What is that a picture of, anyway?”

“Man in a hood.” Kimmie Dee snatched the book from Isabel, said, “Bye,” and ran toward her house.

Ted Stiles, watching her go, seemed unperturbed. “The ideas young’uns get are amazing, aren’t they?” he said. He lit a cigarette, dropped the burned match at Isabel’s feet, and strolled away, his black-shod feet making hollows in the sand.

Wind caught the bill of the yellow painter’s cap Buddy Burke was wearing and nearly took it off, but Buddy caught it in time and pulled it lower on his brow. He had found the cap beside the road. Luck.

The truck he was riding in the back of hit a bump and sent him up in the air, to crash down on his butt. He settled against the cab and looked around for something to hold on to. There wasn’t anything but the side of the truck, so he latched onto that.

Buddy had companions here, a couple of liver-mottled bird dogs. Vaccination tags clinking with every bounce, they lay calmly on their filthy blanket and eyed Buddy with expressions that said,
We’ve seen a lot, and you’re the least of it.
That was all right. If the old dude who’d stopped and picked him up didn’t want Buddy next to him, Buddy would ride with the dogs. He was willing to kiss the old man’s busted-up work boots for giving him this ride.

Buddy had walked off his work-release job so easily he thought maybe God Himself wanted him out of the Correctional Facility. He put up his hoe and shovel, neat, like he was supposed to, and said to himself, “I done the work. Now it’s time for the release.” While everybody was milling around, he walked back to the dirt road, found the painter’s cap in a patch of briars, and hitched a ride with the old man and his dogs.

“Where you going to, son?” the old man had asked.

Buddy scratched under his new cap. “Sawmill Branch. Visit my mama.” He knew it was going overboard to say “Visit my mama,” but he was excited. At night in his cell, he had thought about where to claim he was going. He wouldn’t say he was going to St. Elmo, because when they realized he was out, they’d be looking for somebody heading for St. Elmo. Sawmill wasn’t far outside Tallahassee. Once he got past Sawmill, he’d say he was going to Alma. Once past Alma, he’d say Westpoint. Once past Westpoint—

“I can get you up to the highway, anyway,” the old man had said. He jerked his thumb toward the back. “Jump on in. They won’t bite.”

He was out of jail. He had walked off work release. The truth of it started to hit him.

Buddy Burke had never, not ever, figured himself to try to escape. What he had intended to do was serve his time and get out.

Until he got that pitiful letter from Kimmie Dee.
Daddy, can I have boots? Please. I dont like Mr. S.

Lying in his bunk, Buddy had gone over ways of handling the situation. He thought of writing to tell Joy to buy the boots, or asking who the hell this Mr. S. was, or combinations of those possibilities. What came clear was, at any point Joy could flimflam him. If Joy was messing with him, Buddy wanted to have it out with her. It had gotten to be a need.

Up to now, the only person in the world Buddy had wanted to hurt was the Marine Patrolman who had stopped his boat and arrested him, a smartass yelling at Buddy through a megaphone. Buddy had definitely wanted to hurt that boy, but he got over it. In truth, it had made him feel odd when he read about the death of the patrolman, Darryl Kelly, in the papers. That was after Buddy was already inside. He had read how they found Darryl Kelly’s arm in the shark’s stomach, and it gave him the heebie-jeebies.

Buddy had to cover a hundred miles between here and St. Elmo, and he’d have to stop hitching rides when word of his escape got out. He might have to steal. He had never stolen anything in his life, not so much as a stick of gum, but if he had to steal, he would. He had come to terms with it those nights he lay thinking.

They had turned onto a paved road, compressed gravel hissing beneath the tires of the truck. The dogs were stretched out, sound asleep. The truck stopped at a red light and the old man stuck his head out the window and yelled at Buddy, “Highway up yonder! Next stop!”

“All right,” Buddy yelled back, and stretched his legs. His back hurt and his butt had gone to sleep. Now that he was leaving, he wished he could stay with the old man and the dogs, go home with them and spend the night. Maybe the old man had a wife who was a good cook. After supper they’d all watch TV and eat some vanilla ice cream before going to bed.

The old man pulled up at the intersection. “Here we are!” he yelled. Buddy looked around: auto dealerships, fast-food restaurants, gas stations on all four corners.

He vaulted over the side of the truck, nearly losing his cap, his feeble disguise, again. “I thank you,” he called to the old man as he sprinted to get out of the traffic. The old man didn’t even look at him, just lifted his horny hand in farewell.

Buddy stood on the traffic island, cars whizzing around him. He should cross to the roadside, get over there and hitch, but suddenly he was afraid. Word might be out already. Had he been in the old man’s truck thirty minutes? Longer? In back of the gas station catty-corner across the intersection was a stand of pine woods. He had to get over there, get under cover, so he could think.

The lights seemed to take a long time to change. Buddy kept his eyes on those trees. He was naked out here.

When the light changed, he dashed across. Sweating, he strode by the gas station, across a strip of ground strewn with plastic bags and empty motor-oil cans, and into the shadow of the pines. It was late afternoon. He felt the woods close around him.

In the cross, in the cross,
Be my glory ever
Till my raptured soul shall find
Rest beyond the river.

The last note of the organ faded. In the front pew, Isabel closed her hymnal and bowed her head for the benediction. The scent of flowers was heavy in the unmoving air, the light in the sanctuary subdued. The amen was pronounced, a nose was blown, and behind Isabel the men from Merriam’s Sunday school class, her pallbearers, shuffled in preparation for their march out. Eve Davenant, on Isabel’s left, settled the strap of her handbag on her shoulder. Clem stood at the end of the pew, offering Isabel his arm.

There was a decent, if not huge, crowd. Isabel was conscious of solemn and interested faces turned toward her as she and Clem walked up the aisle. The carpet seemed to stretch out forever, and then they were through the doorway and in the vestibule, and Clem was murmuring, “Nice service, wasn’t it?”

It had been. The minister obviously had known Merriam well and had given her a good send-off. Now the car was waiting to take them to the cemetery.

They crossed the broad porch of the church. The air was bathwater temperature. Behind them, a discreet buzz of conversation started as people straggled out. “Lovely service,” said Eve, and then, “Are you riding out there with me, Clem?”