Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide (22 page)

He took the box from her. The lid closed, John James vanished from view, and they were standing on the front porch saying good-bye.

Bainbridge said, “This has been a tonic for me. My wife died last year, and my children don’t live close by. I haven’t been well.”

“I’m so sorry. I hope you’ll—”

He shook his head. “No. I won’t get better. But I’ll hope to see you again, if you’re in the neighborhood.”

Isabel said good-bye to River Pete’s son and started back to Cape St. Elmo.

It was almost laughable. A few times on the way home, Isabel felt her lips pulling into a bitter smile.

What had happened to the sainted John James now seemed fairly clear. He and Pete had, as she guessed, dug up gold coins from the
Esperanza.
Who had had the idea to go to Cuba? Pete, the footloose gambler? Or John James, the debt-ridden visionary? It was easy to imagine how they had reinforced one another.

They had found buried treasure. A person’s life has to change when such a thing happens. A man doesn’t go on as he has before, struggling to support a wife and children in a mockery of a house, or living on the beach and doing odd jobs. They had loaded the gold on John James’s boat— no point in waiting, having word of it get around, especially to John James’s creditors— and off they had gone.

John James had seen fit to share his windfall by giving Merriam what was probably the least of it, the blue-and-white porcelain bottle.

And a letter. The lost letter. What had he said to excuse his defection?

A good friend of his died of scarlet fever and that made him decide to change his life.
There was no way to prove it, but Isabel had to believe River Pete’s dead friend had been John James Anders.

If she was right, John James had died in Cuba. River Pete Addison had come back to Florida with the last of his gold and recreated himself as Addison Bainbridge. He sold three of his remaining four gold pieces, married, joined the Primitive Baptist Church, paid his twenty-dollar debt to the Purseys. And never, ever, ate fish again.

As she got closer to Cape St. Elmo, the cottonmouth moccasin began to intrude on Isabel’s thoughts. Her palms started to sweat as she saw again the flat spade-shaped head, the greenish brown form twisting along the floor of the kitchen. It couldn’t come back, but what if it did?

Maybe she should try drawing the moccasin. She thought she could do it. She had a perfect, more than vivid, mental picture of how it had looked and moved. She would try, see if she could objectify the snake, put it out there on paper instead of letting it terrorize her imagination.

Absorbed, she planned how she would render the snake, perhaps in conjunction with other local plants and animals— sandspurs and dollar weeds, grasshoppers and yellow jackets, jellyfish and pelicans. It would be a nightmare version of the illuminated manuscript effect she had worked on so hard for
The Children from the Sea.
Instead of pretty fruits and flowers, she could do a grotesque border that intruded into the picture, threatened to take it over and smother it, like kudzu vines.

She drove another mile or two, chewing at the idea.

It might even work for her book. Instead of her medieval never-never land, have Marin and Marinette, the heroic twins, shipwrecked on Cape St. Elmo, threatened with its dangers. Instead of a stone castle, there was an old house in the midst of the weeds. Instead of classically pretty, lifeless figures for the heroes, there was—

There was Kimmie Dee Burke. Kimmie Dee wasn’t the model for the evil foster sister, but for the courageous Marin and Marinette.

Isabel couldn’t wait to get to her sketchbook. At least she had that, her constant escape hatch. At least she could pick up her pencil and draw.

She drove up to the trailer under the lengthening shadows. Her mind full of her project, she dashed inside.

The blow came from nowhere. It caused a flash in her eyes, like staring at the sun. She had only enough time to think she shouldn’t do that. She would go blind.

Buddy Burke sat huddled under the half-caved-in roof of a shanty, waiting for night to fall. Although it was a hot evening, he was shaking like a bastard.

He was worried about the old engineer, the one he’d left tied up at the landing. Buddy was scared maybe the engineer had died.

He had gotten so worried about it, he had scuttled the boat. Doing it hadn’t been easy, and Buddy was wet through.

The old man wouldn’t have died. He was only tied up.

And gagged. What if he puked and choked to death? What if he had a heart attack?

Buddy pulled his legs in closer to his body.

Fears about the engineer had spoiled Buddy’s homecoming mood as he rode along Deep Creek and out into the river. By the time he had pulled up under some bushes to sleep, he had been really spooked. He had lingered in his hiding place through this morning, paralyzed, afraid to move, until he said to himself,
Just get going.
He had gotten going and made it to the canal before fear overtook him again.

That was when he had scuttled the boat. If they found him in that boat, they’d know he had killed the engineer, if the engineer was dead. He had tossed his shotgun out on the bank and knocked a hole in the wood bottom of the boat with the propeller shaft of the motor. He had damn near drowned himself doing it and could still taste brackish water in the back of his throat. The shotgun had gotten wet, too, and he wasn’t even sure it would fire.

He was pretty close to home. He had tromped through these woods, his home woods, and taken shelter in the tumbledown shanty. Buddy had only the shotgun and the clothes on his back. No food. No money. He was maybe half an hour’s fast walk from the coast and his house.

He had come this far. That could not be denied. He had come this far.

Buddy had made an important decision: He would not go anywhere until dark. He wouldn’t wander around in daylight begging them to catch him. In the dark, he could move. He knew the route home.

Yes, he was hungry and beaten-down. But he had come this far.

Keyed up as he was, Buddy managed to sleep a while, slumped against the weathered boards. When his own snoring woke him, the night was as dark as the inside of a dog.

Buddy blundered to his feet and nearly fell down again because one foot had gone to sleep. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He couldn’t see his gun. He couldn’t see jack.

On his hands and knees, he felt around until he found the gun. He got up and struck out through the woods. He had no plan. His mind told him only,
You came this far. Now go on
.

The trip took at least an hour. Buddy could be sure he was going right only if he didn’t let himself think about it. The minute he started to question the route, he was paralyzed. After a while, he came to some houses along the banks of the canal. Soon after that, he reached the culvert where the canal passed under Beach Road and then went by the Beachcomber.

Buddy had no watch. He didn’t know what time it was, but he figured ten or eleven. He didn’t want to risk crossing the road, so he climbed down into the culvert. He stood there catching his breath in the barrel-vaulted space.

It was not nearly as dark as before, because of the Beachcomber and the cottages. Light reflected off the water and rippled across the top of the culvert. Clutching his shotgun, Buddy inched through. On the other side, he crouched by a stand of cattails. When an inner signal told him to go, he climbed up the bank, crossed an expanse of weedy ground and plunged forward into the dunes. Sand coated his wet boots and crusted the legs of his jeans.

Keeping low, he dodged between the cottages and the road. Everything was quiet.

Finally, he got to his place— dark except for a light in the carport. Two cars there, Joy’s and another one. Buddy gritted his teeth against the tears that wanted to fill his eyes. There, in front of him, was his home. His wife, his little girl, his baby son. Keeping well out of the carport light, he circled toward the water side of the house and approached slowly, slowly. He could see the windows, dark with the blinds down, and the deck. There was something in the window of Kimmie Dee’s room.

After a while, he drew close enough to see what it was— a sign, in red crayon on lined school paper, was taped to the window screen. The sign said, DANJUR.

Buddy knew very well, as soon as he caught on that she meant
danger,
that the sign wasn’t some kiddie game. Kimmie Dee meant the sign for him, and the message was, Buddy Burke should haul ass out of here. But what was all his trouble for? What was it for if he didn’t even see Kimmie Dee?

He tapped on Kimmie Dee’s screen with his fingernail. If she didn’t come right away, he’d leave. But it wasn’t fifteen seconds before the blinds bent and her eyes peered out.

“Hey, honey,” Buddy whispered The tears did come then, just a couple of them, but he wiped them away while she was letting the blind up an inch or two.

She whispered, “Hey, Daddy!”

“Hey, Kimmie Dee. Kimmie Dee, listen—”

“Daddy, didn’t you see my sign?”

“I saw it, honey, but I wanted to—”

“You better be careful. Mr. Stiles is going to shoot you.”

Mr. Stiles. Mr. S. “Is that who Mr. S. is? In your letter?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Ted Stiles. He’s got a—”

“Now, tell me something. Is he there now? Mr. Stiles?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Stiles was there, in the middle of the night, with Joy. It was all true, what he’d feared.

After a minute, Kimmie Dee said, “Daddy, can I go away with you?”

“No, honey. That wouldn’t work.”

“Please.”

Oh God. “I can’t take you with me, Kimmie Dee.” There was something else. “Kimmie Dee, you wrote to me about some boots—”

She shook her head. “Never mind. Isabel got me a pair.” She waved a hand. “You better
go.”

Isabel? Who the hell was Isabel? Buddy was shaking from head to foot. Kimmie Dee was right. He had to get out of here. “I’ll see you, honey,” he said.

He blew her a kiss and backed away from the house as the blind swung back into place. He couldn’t feel his feet on the ground.

He had taken only a couple of steps when the tall man appeared underneath the carport. Buddy saw him clear as anything, a lean man with curly hair. A gun in his hand. Mr. Ted Stiles, Buddy was willing to bet.

“Hold on, Buddy,” Ted Stiles said.

Fury flooded Buddy’s gut. “Don’t tell
me
to hold on,” he said. He swung the shotgun up, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The wet son of a bitch did not fire.

Buddy saw Ted Stiles raise his gun. Next thing, there was a boom. Something hit him hard and he was falling, his mouth making sounds that didn’t mean a thing.

Isabel yearned for light. It seemed that if she had light, the throbbing in her head would subside, and if the throbbing subsided, she would be cooler, and if—

Round and round it went. Heat, darkness, pain.

She had awakened only minutes ago, although she had a memory of being carried and a notion that she had been outside.

Where was she now? In a hot, dark, painful place. She squeezed her eyes closed and opened them wide. Blackness. Had she really gone blind?

She began to be aware of the position of her body. Her wrists and ankles were tied, her hands behind her. She was lying on her side on a wood floor. Her mouth was gagged.

The atmosphere was airless.

Her former unconsciousness now seemed like bliss. She closed her eyes and let herself spin downward, trying to return to it.

She couldn’t. Her head ached with every beat of her pulse; her hands and shoulders threatened to cramp. She was straining against her bonds, which made it worse. She forced her muscles to relax.

She lay without thinking. Who had done this to her, and why, seemed irrelevant. Nothing mattered except continuing, taking one searing breath after another.

After a long time, she thought she might try to sit up. A powerful part of her argued against it. She was hurting, at the mercy of whatever force had visited this on her. Sitting up would be a waste of energy, an exercise in futility.

Except that sitting up was what human beings did. Lying here aching, choked on dust and heat, was for times when you couldn’t do better. If you had an inkling that you might be able to sit up, you sat.

Pulling herself upright was hellishly difficult, because she couldn’t separate her ankles to lever herself. The attempt became, in its way, diverting as she tried to figure out which muscle groups were available to her.

The way to do it, she found, was to roll over on her back. She could do this by pulling with her top knee, which dragged the other leg up. Once on her back, she rocked upright and was rewarded with dizziness and nausea. She leaned forward and rested her forehead on her bent knees, willing it to pass. Her head seemed to be cracking open. The random thought came to her that she might die.

When the worst passed, she was bathed in sweat. She turned her head, rested her cheek on her knees, and tried to breathe evenly. It took all the courage she could muster to raise her head again.

This time, the reaction wasn’t as bad. When the wooziness subsided, she began inching herself backward on her buttocks. Before long, her bound hands came in contact with something— a wall. Although most of the feeling was gone from her fingers, she could tell it was a wooden wall. She managed, awkwardly, to lean back against it.

Wood floor, wood wall. She wondered—

She heard footsteps. The sound was muffled. The steps were closed off from her, but somebody was there, nearby. Her heart drummed, but whether from hope or dread, she didn’t know. She listened hard, put all her strength into listening.

The steps stopped, and just then she heard another sound. Far off, a siren was wailing. A fire truck or an ambulance. She hadn’t heard a siren, not one, since she’d arrived at Cape St. Elmo. She used to hear them all the time in New York. For a moment, she entertained the crazed notion that her captor had somehow transported her to New York.

The siren continued. Even in the enclosed space where she was, it grew fairly loud. Something was happening nearby. Could it be a fire? Was she— had she been left in a place that was on fire? She felt her lips push against the cloth of her gag as she tried to scream, but the incipient groans died in her throat and she thought,
Breathe. Breathe. Do you smell smoke?