Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide Read online

  TWENTY-ONE

  Buddy Burke stood in the dank mud at the river’s edge and listened to cars whizzing by on the bridge over his head. In the near cool of morning, the concrete pillars around him emitted a clammy chill.

  Buddy could feel his heart beating. He could smell his own rank smell mingling with the other odors around him.

  If Buddy had been smart, which he would be the first to admit was questionable, he would have gotten here to cross the bridge early, when the traffic was light and the chances of being seen slim. He hadn’t done that. After he arrived and assessed the situation he had scrambled down the bank with the thought, humorous as it was, that he might find a skiff here, or even swim across. He took three seconds to discover that his fairy godmother had not left any skiff for him, and two more seconds to decide he wasn’t about to swim.

  Buddy’s jailbreak was turning out to be a bigger pain than he’d anticipated. Mainly, he was a lot more scared than he had imagined he’d be. The idea of standing out and hitching a ride struck him as suicidal craziness now. He believed anybody who stopped to pick him up would know right away he was Buddy Burke, escaped convict, armed and dangerous. Except Buddy wasn’t armed and dangerous. He only wished he was.

  Buddy had tromped through the woods until late the night before, unsure where he was heading until by sheer luck he found himself at Sawmill. It must have been eleven o’clock or thereabouts, and the gas station and the convenience store attached to it were about to close. He had a little money, enough to buy himself a Coke and some beef jerky sticks. The clerk was more interested in closing up than he was in watching Buddy, so Buddy stole a Reese’s peanut butter cup, slipping it in his pocket, sweating like a pig the whole time. He hadn’t even eaten the damn thing. It was still in his pocket, probably smushed by now.

  Buddy had slept last night, what sleep he got, in a spider-filled woodshed behind a brick ranch house in the middle of nowhere. The house was dark, no car in the drive, no dogs in the wire pen out back, a satellite dish near the shed like a big white moon.

  The sun was up good and proper now. A yellow jacket buzzed past and the mosquitoes were getting bothersome. Across the river, next to the bridge, was a low wooden structure with a painted sign: RIVERSIDE TAVERN. It put Buddy in mind of the song: Gonna lay down my burden, down by the riverside, down by the riverside—

  No cars were coming. He galloped up the bank and onto the bridge. There was no walkway on either side. Feet pounding, hugging the railing, he sprinted forward. If a car came he would slow down but keep walking. He didn’t want to look scared or like it wasn’t perfectly natural to cross this bridge on foot.

  He heard a car behind him. He slowed to a fast walk and didn’t turn around. The car swooshed past, horn blaring. Buddy didn’t give him the finger or even look up.

  First thing you know he had made it, and was standing in the packed-clay parking lot of the Riverside Tavern, heaving to catch his breath. He was leaning against the building, still breathing hard, when he saw the back wheel of the motorcycle.

  There was a motorcycle behind the tavern, half-covered with a tarpaulin.

  Buddy moseyed back there, took off the tarp, and inspected the machine. A Yamaha. Some trusting soul had even left a helmet hanging from the handlebars. Buddy loved motorcycles. He’d had several that he used to take apart and put back together. Joy had made him sell the last one when Toby was born.

  In a lean-to in back of the Riverside Tavern, Buddy found paint cans, brushes with their bristles stuck together, a quantity of rags, a tackle box filled with rusty fishhooks and moldering lures, and several kinds of wire. He found enough makeshift equipment so he could easily crank the motorcycle. Without letting himself think about it too much, that’s what he proceeded to do. The engine spit and roared into life. “Aw, baby,” Buddy said.

  Nobody came rushing out of the Riverside Tavern to demand an explanation. “Let’s go, baby,” Buddy said. He stuffed his cap in his pocket and put the helmet on. He didn’t even have to adjust the strap.

  He wheeled around and put-putted down to the road. He loved this machine. Loved it. Next break in the traffic, he was on his way. The sun was strong now, and the wind was full in his face. Soon, he passed a sign that told him he was only five miles from Alma.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “I reckon he escaped so he could bring me some boots,” said Kimmie Dee Burke. She pronounced it ex-scaped.

  “Maybe,” said Isabel. “Be still for a second more, all right?”

  Kimmie Dee was sitting on an upturned bucket by the trailer door, a crocheted shawl of Merriam’s draped around her head and shoulders. She looked more striking than Isabel had anticipated. In repose, her face had a pensive sweetness that was almost too appealing for the villainous Marotte. Isabel was working as swiftly as she could, since Kimmie Dee was not the most patient sitter in the world.

  “I’m hot with this thing on,” the girl complained.

  “Just half a second, all right? Look the other way, like you were doing before.”

  Kimmie Dee sighed but resumed the pose. Great. Isabel made a few modifications. “Okay. All done.”

  Kimmie Dee took off the shawl and dropped it on the step. She said, “Don’t you think that’s right? He’s coming to bring me the boots?”

  Isabel wasn’t sure what to say. “Maybe so, Kimmie Dee.”

  “If he does bring them, I’ll have two pairs.”

  Kimmie Dee was wearing new white majorette boots, boots Isabel had bought for her in town that morning. According to Kimmie Dee, her mother knew about their outing and its purpose. “I told her. I sure did,” she had declared.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said it was okay.”

  “Just okay? That’s all?”

  “That’s all. She wasn’t paying much attention, because she’s worried about my daddy.”

  Kimmie Dee studied her feet for the hundredth time. “These are just right,” she pronounced. Then she said, “Isabel, I’m kind of worried.”

  “About what?”

  “My daddy.”

  Why shouldn’t she be worried? Still, Isabel asked, “Why?”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Stiles will shoot him.”

  Isabel had been studying her drawings. She closed the sketchbook. “Why should Mr. Stiles do that?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s got a gun. I saw it.”

  This was disturbing news. “Are you sure?”

  Kimrnie Dee nodded. “I saw it. It’s under his jacket.” Her face clouded. “I wish I could tell my daddy to stay away.”

  Guns were common around here. It wasn’t terribly surprising that Ted Stiles would have one. “Just because Mr. Stiles has a gun, it doesn’t mean he’d shoot at your father.”

  “I bet he would, though.”

  Isabel began to comprehend how upset the girl was behind her matter-of-fact facade. “Kimmie Dee, don’t you think your father will turn himself in? That’s what the police are hoping.”

  Kimmie Dee shook her head. “He’s coming. He got my letter, and he’s coming.”

  Isabel had no counter-argument. She gave Kimmie Dee a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of lemonade. Just before Kimmie Dee left, she took off the new boots, dusted them with a tissue, and replaced them in their square white box. She offered the box to Isabel. “You keep them for me. Keep them here.”

  “Don’t you want to show them to your mother?”

  “No. Not right now.”

  Isabel hesitated. Kimmie Dee held out the box again. “All right?”

  “All right.”

  Isabel walked Kimmie Dee to the road, watched her cross it and run to her back door, and came back down the drive. A bright green lizard on the path puffed out his chest.

  Isabel stopped, once again, to look at the house. There was her inheritance, the local landmark that should be preserved, John James’s folly. Legs apart and hands clasped behind her, feeling like David confronting Goliath, she contemplated it.


  Maybe she should go inside.

  The thought had been in her head for a while. She was planning to go in, of course. She had the keys in her handbag. She was planning to go in when she was ready, when the time was right.

  The house stood before her, indifferent.

  Isabel had first entered that house as a cowed nine-year-old, her parents recently dead. Because her father and Merriam had been estranged, she had never been inside it until that day. She still remembered dust motes whirling in a beam of sunshine in the wide central hallway, the coat tree with its threatening curved hooks, the shadows at the top of the staircase. She had followed Merriam through the door and been engulfed.

  She remembered the green velvet curtains in the parlor, the cool marble mantelpiece, the scuffed flowers on the linoleum of the kitchen floor. The glass in her bedroom windows was old and distorted the light. She had no need to go in to be reminded of any of this.

  A crowbar. She would need a crowbar or something to pry the boards away. A crowbar, and the keys. There was a crowbar in the trailer, in the cabinet under the sink. She went to get it.

  It seemed fitting to go in the back door, since, years ago, she had left that way. She had tiptoed downstairs and through the kitchen, let herself out and crossed the creaking porch. Ben was up on the road, waiting in his car. When she saw him, saw that he had really come, she had been filled with happiness.

  Crowbar and keys in hand, she rounded the back corner of the house. The back porch was sagging badly. The wooden lattice surrounding the base of the house to keep animals out had fallen down. The screen door to the porch hung open.

  The slats that crisscrossed the kitchen door were half-rotten, the nails rusty. She used the crowbar to loosen them, but she could almost have pulled them out by hand. She dropped the boards and searched for the right key. She found it and eased it into the lock. You have to jiggle this one a little, she suddenly remembered, and then she had turned it. The door opened.

  There was a scurrying sound when she stepped in. Mice or rats, probably. The air was baking hot, with an overpowering smell of dust and mildew. The empty kitchen cabinets stood open, and the deep sink was badly rust-stained. A shiny brown palmetto beetle, two inches long at least, scuttled across the counter, sunlight glinting on its back.

  She walked into the dining room. The table and chairs were gone, the built-in sideboard empty except for a tarnished silver ladle lying on its side. A feather, a small curl of down, floated past her face. This room was slightly less hot. Air was coming in from somewhere. The floor in front of one of the tall windows was spotted with bird droppings. She crossed to the windows, which were nearly blocked by intruding undergrowth. Yes, one of them was open a crack. At some point, it must have been open wider, if birds had gotten in.

  She continued through the downstairs rooms— the front parlor, where a few pieces of furniture huddled under dust sheets in the middle of the floor; the back parlor, with a carpet rolled up against the wall; the entrance hall. The hall coat tree still stood by the door, a red baseball cap hanging on one of its hooks. Isabel picked up the cap. Beachcomber Boatel was embroidered above the brim in flowing white script. She hung the cap up again.

  She was standing at the foot of the staircase. When she had come here with Merriam, she had never lived in a place with stairs before. They had made her feel that the distances in the house were enormous.

  Having come this far, she wasn’t going to leave without looking at her former bedroom. She started up.

  She was only halfway to the top when she knew something was not right. The air had a different feel up here. Instead of the deadness of neglect, it had smells, a quality of disturbance and habitation. She stood still, her head raised.

  She heard nothing except sounds she was now accustomed to, the creakings and scrabblings that accompanied emptiness. She thought about the red gasoline can she had seen on the front steps, the open window, the cap hanging on the hall tree.

  Everything was quiet. She took another step, two more. Her head was even with the landing now. The landing was ringed with doors, all but one of them closed. The door to the corner back bedroom, the room that had been hers, stood ajar. A beam of light sifted out and made a dim gold track across the floorboards.

  She had reached the top of the stairs. She called out, “Hello? Is anybody here?”

  Silence. An insect whined. She crossed the landing and pushed the open door.

  It swung inward silently and she stood on the threshold. Nobody was in the room, but it was neither empty nor uninhabited. Sunlight, coming in through torn places in the disintegrating window shades, illuminated a roomful of clutter: a sleeping bag, a tangle of snorkels and masks, an ice chest, a wadded T-shirt. In the middle of the floor lay three medium-sized iron balls, their surfaces flaking with rust. In the corner where her bed used to be were shelves holding a battered-looking pewter pitcher, an enamel dishpan, various distorted-looking pieces of metal, bottles of chemicals.

  “Anybody here?” she said again, with less trepidation. She stepped into the room. Somebody had been staying here in reasonable comfort, it seemed. She looked in the ice chest. Half-submerged in a sloshy combination of water and ice were cartons of yogurt, a package of cheese, a jar of peanut butter, a couple of bottles of club soda, and a tomato.

  She checked the closet. It was empty except for a pile of burlap sacks in the darkest corner. She started to close the door again, then reached in and looked underneath the pile. Concealed there was a beige plastic tackle box closed with a combination lock. She pulled at the lock, but it didn’t give. After a minute or two, she rearranged the burlap over it. Why padlock a tackle box?

  Someone had been here all this time, living in her old room, hiding.

  She knelt to examine the iron balls. She poked at one, then picked it up. It was about the size to fit in her two cupped hands, heavy, rusty enough so the surface crumbled against her fingers. She wondered for a moment whether these could be old-fashioned bowling balls, then shook her head. Surely they were cannonballs. She put down the one she was holding, wiped her hands against the legs of her shorts, and moved on to the objects on the shelves. There was the pewter pitcher, as well as bottles of chemicals, a coffee can containing square-headed nails, several misshapen pieces of corroded metal. And an enamel dishpan half full of pieces of broken porcelain.

  Blue-and-white porcelain.

  She sorted through the dishpan, picked out a large piece, and took it nearer the window. Flowering branches and flying birds: The pattern was identical to the pattern of the bottle in the trailer, the bottle John James had given Merriam.

  Isabel stood by the window, rubbing her thumb over the porcelain surface. She was thinking hard about Harry Mercer.

  After a while, she put the fragment in her pocket. She left the bedroom door ajar, as it had been. She descended the stairs noiselessly and let herself out the back door.

  The boards that had been nailed across the door lay with rusty nails protruding. She replaced them as best she could, pushing the nails back into their holes. It didn’t look exactly as it had before, but it didn’t look too different.

  The air seemed almost cool after the close atmosphere of the house. Isabel pulled her damp shirt away from her body. Crowbar in hand, she returned to the trailer.

  The blue-and-white patterns were exactly the same. She held the bottle and the shard under a table lamp. Not only were the patterns identical, but the thickness and weight of the glass seemed similar to her untrained eye. There were probably tests that could determine the truth once and for all, but for now she would assume they had come from the same place.

  Which meant— what?

  For one thing, it meant Harry Mercer was involved in whatever was going on in the house. His puzzling reaction to the porcelain bottle was not so puzzling now. Harry, she was sure, had known about these broken pieces.

  Isabel was stung. She had responded to Harry, made love with him. The encounter had been ill-considered, even wron
g, but full of tenderness. Or so she had thought. Now, she had to ask herself what his underlying motives were.

  She snapped off the lamp. What was going on here? Cannonballs, a pewter pitcher— these objects seemed to be historical artifacts. Given the corroded cannonballs and the diving equipment, she guessed they might have been taken from a shipwreck. Harry, and whoever else was involved, wanted to keep their activities secret. That’s why they had commandeered the broken-down, deserted Anders place, the old house nobody cared about.

  This must have been going on while Merriam was still here, living in the trailer. Merriam, her eyesight and hearing not as sharp as they used to be, would have been fairly easy to fool.

  Or would she? Merriam’s “accident,” the “fall” Isabel had found so hard to credit, began to seem even more sinister. The idea that Harry might have been involved made her sick.

  The anonymous letters. Isabel had suspected Harry of sending them. She could understand now why he would want her to go away, leave him to whatever secret operation he was involved in. Now you can go back where you came from, you whore. She thought of his promise to put a stop to the letters. What could be easier, if he was writing them himself?

  All right, she had been stupid. She admitted it. She waited for the flood of heat to subside from her face.

  It must be against the law to take objects from shipwrecks without permission. Surely there were regulations governing it. Shipwrecks would have historical value, archaeological importance.

  Underwater archaeology, you might call it.

  Clem Davenant had used that term, talking about his son’s diving accident. Was Clem involved, too?

  The thought of something more valuable than cannonballs came into her mind.

  Sunken treasure? Oh please. That was a topic out of kids’ adventure stories. Chests spilling over with coins, bars of gold, ropes of pearls, surrounded by cartoon fish blowing cartoon bubbles.

  There had been cases in recent years, though. She reached into a hazy memory of newspaper articles skimmed on the subway. Sunken treasure, from Spanish galleons and other ships, had been found from time to time— down in the Keys, off South Carolina, in Bermuda, the Bahamas, or somewhere. Gold was recovered, millions of dollars’ worth.