Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide Read online

  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.

  SEVENTEEN

  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.

  EIGHTEEN

  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?”

  “I thought maybe I’d go with Isabel.” He hesitated. “If Isabel would like me to.”

  Isabel had begun to think Clem was pushing duty too far. There was no need for him to reawaken painful memories of his son’s death by going to the cemetery at all, and to go in the funeral director’s limousine seemed almost masochistic. On the other hand, he could be treating the occasion as a private rite of passage. She had protested enough. “I’d appreciate it.”

  “I’ll see you out there, then,” Eve said. She parted fr
om them, and the driver ushered Isabel and Clem into the backseat of the limousine.

  Isabel leaned against the soft gray upholstery. The air conditioner had kept the interior almost too cool. The driver stood outside, waiting for the coffin to be loaded into the hearse.

  Clem touched her sleeve. “Hang in there,” he said.

  “I’m all right.” Through the tinted glass, she watched the dispersing crowd. Some of them had come out to the trailer earlier and left food— baked ham and fried chicken, potato salad, mandarin orange and marshmallow salad, turnip greens, lemon meringue pie. There was no way Isabel could eat it all, but that wasn’t the point. They had brought it because that was part of what you did when somebody died.

  “Are you really all right?” Clem asked.

  She turned to look at him. His dark navy suit and tie accentuated his pallor. “What do you mean?”

  “I get the feeling something is bothering you. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  Isabel studied her folded hands in her lap, the weave of her dark gray skirt. “No. You’re not wrong.”

  “Can you tell me what the problem is?”

  Could she? Maybe it was time for a reality check. “I think there was something strange about Merriam’s… accident, or whatever it was. And her death.”

  A crease appeared between his eyes and disappeared a second later. “Strange?”

  “To be blunt about it, I think it’s possible somebody attacked her— and maybe even killed her.” Launched, she pressed on. The mysterious concussion, the man in the hood, the unlatched window screen. There was so little to tell, she had finished by the time the driver got in and eased the limousine into the street behind the hearse.

  Clem listened without changing expression. When she stopped talking, he nodded gravely. “Isabel, everything you’ve said is logical, except for one thing— your opening premise. You’re saying somebody would want to kill Miss Merriam.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “I mean, people do atrocious things, and attacking a woman eighty-plus years old isn’t unheard-of, but she wasn’t robbed. Robbery’s the only motive I can think of.”

  Isabel had been through this on her own already. “It could have been bad luck. Bad timing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She could’ve seen something she wasn’t supposed to. Blundered into something.” Faced with his opposition, she felt herself digging in her heels.

  A flush had colored his cheekbones. “Something criminal, you mean? Keep in mind that this isn’t New York.”

  “I’m not likely to forget it,” she snapped. “If you’ll do me a favor and consider the possibility that I could be right—”

  “I said it was logical—”

  “—then you’ll see it’s entirely possible Merriam found out something she wasn’t supposed to know and that she could have been in danger because of it.”

  They glowered at one another. Clem said, “I’ll be willing to concede your point if you can tell me what you think she found out.”

  “I don’t know, Clem.”

  “Right.”

  A few minutes later they passed under the wrought-iron entrance arch at the St. Elmo municipal cemetery. Across the expanse of tombstones, pine trees, and patchy grass, a green canopy marked the grave site. Clem was looking out the opposite window. When they got out of the limousine and walked across to the canopy, she didn’t take his arm.

  The crowd at the burial was reduced in numbers from the church, the ceremony brief. Heat gathered under the canopy. Gnats danced in Isabel’s face.

  Afterward, she was surrounded by people offering condolences. Bernice Chatham, in a black straw hat, pressed her hand and whispered, “I did my best. I couldn’t have done no more.”

  As Isabel spoke with the mourners, she caught sight of Clem standing immobile at a grave not far away. She saw Eve come up to him and speak. Clem gave no indication of having heard. Eve put her hand on his arm. He jerked it out of her grasp, turned, and walked rapidly away from her toward the parked cars.

  In a moment, Eve materialized at Isabel’s elbow. “Clem has to get to the office. He’s going back to town with me,” she said.

  “All right.” Many people were leaving. When Isabel had a moment, she walked to the grave where Clem had been standing. The tombstone read, EDWARD CLEMONS DAVENANT III, and gave the boy’s birth and death dates. Underneath was carved, “He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down.”

  ***

  People stopped by the trailer all afternoon to pay their respects, and by the time the last visitor left it was late. Isabel kicked off her shoes, removed the suit jacket that had been roasting her all day, stepped out of her skirt, and peeled off her pantyhose.

  Someone knocked at the door.

  Cursing, she pulled on shorts and a shirt and yanked the door open, to find a short, sturdily built young man in a uniform standing by the step. He had a brush haircut, pimples dotting his chin, and a gun on his hip. He said, “Deputy Jones, Sheriff’s Department. I’m speaking to the residents in this immediate area about Buddy Burke. Do you know Buddy Burke at all?”

  Buddy Burke. Kimmie Dee’s father, who was in jail. Kimmie Dee had written to him about boots, and Isabel mailed the letter. “I’ve never met him. I know his daughter.”

  “He was incarcerated up in Tallahassee and he walked off from his work-release program,” the deputy said. “We’re asking folks around here to keep an eye out for him, since his family lives right over yonder.”

  How terrible for Kimmie Dee. Isabel said, “Is he dangerous?”

  “No, ma’am, we don’t think so.” The deputy seemed almost apologetic. “Matter of fact, they figure he’ll turn himself back in. Either that or show up here to see his family. It’s the first time he’s been sent away, and they reckon he got a little homesick.”

  Isabel tried to remember what Kimmie Dee had said about her father’s crime. “He sold marijuana, is that right?”

  The deputy nodded and shifted his weight so the gun on his hip jutted out. “That’s right. We got him for selling a couple of times, and then the Marine Patrol caught him hauling some in his boat. That’s when he had to go off for a while.”

  The deputy turned to go. “You happen to see him, ma’am, you give us a call. All right?” With a bowlegged stride, he walked away up the drive.

  Isabel closed the door. Everything seemed burdensome— the plates of food everywhere, her shoes in the middle of the floor, John James’s photograph and the bottle on the table beneath it, the grumbling air-conditioner. And now, Buddy Burke. She went into the bathroom, wet a washcloth, and pressed it against her face. When it was warm, she squeezed it out, wet it again, and went into the bedroom to lie down with the cloth draped over her eyes.

  The trailer smelled like cigarette smoke, perspiring bodies, turnip greens. She thought of her apartment in New York, her cool, quaint aerie overlooking the leafy garden. She thought about Zan, her lost job, Chinese food. All of it seemed as insubstantial as a dream, and it modulated into one as she dozed off.

  She woke half an hour later, only slightly refreshed. She was standing in the kitchen, contemplating which of her many home-cooked donations to choose for supper, when there was another knock at the door.

  She answered. It was Harry Mercer.

  To her great surprise, a tremor she could almost call happiness went through her. Harry was a person she had known a long time, a person who knew her. She said, “Harry, how good to see you.”

  She couldn’t tell whether he was surprised at the warmth of her greeting. He said, “I had to stop by. I heard about Miss Merriam.”

  She stood back. “Come in.”

  Inside, he surveyed the array of covered dishes. “You think you got enough food here?”

  She waved an arm toward the table. “Do you want something? I’ve got everything you can imagine.”

  “You got Jell-O mold?”

  “Yes.”

  “Baked ham?”

  “Y
es.”

  “Bean salad?”

  “Of course.”

  He gave her a shrewd look. “How about tuna casserole?”

  “Oh, damn.” She picked up several lids and foil coverings. “No tuna casserole.”

  “Then I’m not going to stay.”

  “Come on, Harry. I’ve got fried chicken. And molasses-baked beans.”

  “Well…”

  She got out plates and cutlery and a couple of beers, and they served themselves and ate in the living room because there was no room on the table. Harry did not, she noted, pay special attention to the porcelain bottle. They talked about who had been at the funeral, and Isabel found herself musing aloud about Merriam.

  “One of the hardest things is to realize that it’s over,” she said. “I won’t have any more chances to understand her, or to make her understand me.”

  Harry shrugged. “Don’t go feeling too sorry about it. She gave you a real bad time. Gave us a bad time.”

  Surprised at his bitter tone, Isabel said, “Yes, she did.”

  “She used to make you cry, Isabel. Do you remember all that?”

  “Yes.” Isabel put her plate aside. “I remember.” It was coming back. The way she had cried in Harry’s arms. She had never cried like that since.

  Harry stood and took his plate to the kitchen. When he returned, he said, “I have to ask you, Isabel. I have to know why you ran off back then. Left the way you did.”

  She had wondered what she might say. Clarity descended. “Ben was ready to take me away,” she said. “You weren’t.”

  Isabel had met the man she ran away with, Airman First Class Ben Raboski, on a night when Harry came down with the flu and didn’t show up for choir practice, and therefore couldn’t be with Isabel afterward.