by Davis Bunn
“Just the name and a telephone number. Do you want it?”
“No.” Allison was probably the only one with the number, which meant if anyone else called she’d be dust and ashes. “Thanks, Allison. This helps me. A lot.”
She shot him an apologetic look. “He gave me an envelope.”
“Cash?”
“Two thousand dollars. That may sound like nothing to you.”
“No, Allison. It doesn’t.”
“What do you want me to do?”
It was his turn to examine the rear parking lot. Despite a night spent tossing and telling himself he could walk away from this, his choices were limited to one. He was involved; he was going. Finished. “Book me on the first flight tomorrow to Jacksonville.”
“No, I mean about the guy. And the money.”
“The money’s yours, Allison. And I want you to tell the guy everything.” He wished he could erase the guilt in those lovely sad eyes. “I owe you.”
“I feel so ashamed.”
“Don’t. You’re a good person caught in an impossible net. Do what they ask and tell me what you can.” He turned away from the window and toward the unattainable quest. Kirra. Thinking her name to the corporate shadows was enough to double his heart rate. “I’ll protect you as best I can.”
TAYLOR TOOK THE HIGHWAY OUT OF JACKSONVILLE’S AIRport because it was the natural thing to do. Soon as he was free of the city’s rush, however, he took an exit west and aimed for the calmer traces of U.S. 1. He had a hunter’s love of quiet reaches. Besides which, he needed to spot his spotters. The last fifteen miles before St. Augustine, the road was empty enough for him to observe how one other car slowed with him.
He arrived at the stoplight where the town’s outer perimeter sprawled like a loathsome bloom of garishly painted concrete and neon. Taylor busied himself with a street map. The car trailing him had no choice but to pull ahead, since they were blocking the other lane and could not hide in stillness. Taylor pretended not to notice them. Horns from his own lane finally jerked him into motion. Taylor roared past the watchers. These two passes and a quick inspection in his rearview mirror were enough. He had his quarry made.
The bridge over the San Sebastian River evoked too many emotions for Taylor to sort out just then. For years the narrow span had been the furthermost border of his invisible prison. Even when he left, it was on a temporary pass. He had been trapped by his heritage and his lack of material resources. He had returned simply because St. Augustine was as good a place as any from which to break free.
He did not want to return home, not while trailing a bevy of danger. On a whim he took the road leading straight into the old town and turned into the Hotel Casa Monica, a place he had visited only once before. He nodded to the young man who jumped to open his door, but his mind remained caught by the past.
One night Kirra’s family had dined there. Taylor had hung around with his buddies in their starched bellhop uniforms and watched their eyebrows climb skyward when Kirra had appeared. That night Kirra had worn a dress made from pink and yellow clouds. It had swirled about her young body in beckoning folds. He had introduced her to his pals both to invoke their envy and because he wanted to remind Kirra just whom she was holding hands with, a boy born to life’s back entrance. Kirra had only snuggled in closer, holding his arm with both hands, pressing her entire form to his as she laughed at something the bellhop had said. Then she had gently tugged him across the street to the town’s central square. Beneath a tribute to the Revolutionary War prisoners the British had encamped on the same stretch of open ground, she had kissed him for the very first time. He could still recall the feel of her lips, and the smell of her perfume, and her taste of strawberries and youth.
This time, he took a suite because he could. The folder Amanda had given him had held an envelope containing five thousand dollars. There was also a super-thin cell phone, along with a driver’s license and credit card made to Robert Pleasance. But when he placed the call, it was on the hotel phone and straight through the Revell switchboard.
There was a fractional hesitation when he gave Amanda’s secretary his name. A series of patches told him Amanda was elsewhere than the corporate penthouse office. But she was on the line in a matter of seconds. Amanda answered as sharp as he had expected. “I told you after midnight!”
“Won’t help. I’ve been made.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that the correct term? Excuse me. I’m new to the game of corporate espionage.”
“You’re being followed?”
“Two men. One of them looks like a shaved gorilla. The other is a graybeard with wraparound shades. They’re driving a silver Caddy. They’ve been on me since the J-ville airport.”
There was a moment of muffled conversation, a pause, then she asked, “Where are you?”
“Casa Monica.”
“What?”
“Sweet, isn’t it? Thought maybe I’d send your old man a postcard.”
Of all the reactions she might have given, the one he least expected was to hear her rusty laugh. “Pop was right. You’re too nasty to hang.”
“These must be your hired hands. I recognize the sullen expression that comes from working for your family.”
“If they are, I’ll have their hides for wallcoverings. Give me their license plate.”
He did so. “You want me to believe you’re not behind this?”
“My security people resent you being called in. They claim they can handle this better on their own.”
“Maybe they can.”
“They’ve had their chance. Stay right where you are.” She clicked and was gone.
Five minutes later she came back with, “They insist it’s not them.”
“So they say.”
“I’ve ordered them to prove they’re not involved by getting rid of your tail. In one hour or less.”
“Amanda, who else would want to keep Kirra hidden?”
“Not now.”
“Amanda—” But the line was dead.
TAYLOR REFUSED TO BE HURRIED, THOUGH THE TENSION in Amanda’s voice remained with him like a cord knotted around his chest. He sat in the lobby, where he found comfort in the multitude of both people and exits. The hotel was Andalusian in architecture and old money in splendor. He was surrounded by the sort of people who could take such things for granted. As though they had been deeded a special ride through life, a ticket fashioned from Persian carpets, hand-painted tiles, indoor fountains, highback Cordovan leather chairs, and gold-embossed ceiling beams. As though their entitlement was so great that they recognized no authority greater than the one they carried in their wallets.
He went through the file once more. The detectives used the desperate tone of a team one step from having their financial plug pulled. We’re so close, all we need is another week, another ten thousand dollars, another five people. Somebody’s job was definitely on the line here.
One item stood out even after Taylor shut the file. Kirra had gone back to school. She was attending Flagler College, taking courses in local history. She had also been working with a certain Father Pellecier on an undisclosed honors project. The professor had refused to disclose what she had been studying, other than to say she had been reviewing documents dating back to the first Spanish period. Taylor doubted that this had anything to do with her disappearance, but he found the information unsettling. It magnified the distance he felt from the only woman he had ever loved.
The phone rang. Amanda said, “They’re gone.”
“Don’t ever hang up on me again.”
Clearly she was not accustomed to being addressed in such a fashion. “Don’t you even care about your stalkers?”
“I’d be more interested in knowing who they are and how your men got to them so fast.”
“Call me tonight.”
“Add to that an explanation of who is after your sister.”
“If I knew that, I’d be halfway to where I didn’t need to be talk
ing with you.” She bit off the words with increasing terseness. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a two-billion-dollar company to run.”
“I know why you called me in. Your detectives followed the standard path and got nowhere. I assume you told them as little as you’re telling me.” When she remained silent, he added, “You either give me some explanations, Amanda, or I’m walking away from this.”
She breathed a moment, long enough that he worried she might call his bluff. Which it was. There was no way he could turn away until he knew Kirra was all right. Much as he might want otherwise.
But all she said was, “Midnight.”
Taylor left the hotel and headed north on foot. Flagler College’s ornate Spanish colonnades and towers powered above the surrounding palms. Taylor took George Street and threaded his way through sweltering tourists. His mind felt as heated as his body, compressed by flavors of a past he both loved and despised.
The woman he was going to see was a former neighbor, now relocated to an apartment block with a view of the Intracoastal Waterway. Ada Folley was both Minorcan and octoroon, the result of discrimination practiced against two equally reviled races. In the sixteenth century, Minorcans had been brought over by the original Spanish settlers to clear the land and drain the swamps and build their fortress. The Spaniards had offered them an impossible boon. Serve the king for seven years and they would earn both freedom and land. The Minorcans were a fiercely stubborn race of mercenary fighters. They had survived, gained their freedom, and put down roots in the rich black soil between the Matanzas and San Sebastian Rivers. After the Civil War they had been joined by freed slaves desperate for what the Minorcans had won two centuries before. Their Yankee administrators had deeded these newcomers bottom land at the growing city’s southern end. St. Augustine thus stood in haughty blindness between the two settlements, the Minorcan’s North Town at one end and Lincolnville at the other.
Ada Folley and her Minorcan shrimper of a husband had formerly lived two houses down from Taylor. She was a taciturn woman with a eye so cold it could halt the scorn of racist neighbors before it was ever uttered. When Taylor had been a child, he had heard rumors that Ada’s mother had practiced juju, the old slave magic. But Ada was a religious woman, and the only time he had worked up the courage to ask her if it was true, she had slapped his face so hard his ears had rung all afternoon.
“Don’t go giving speech to the shadows, you,” was all she had said at the time.
As Taylor climbed the stairs to her apartment, he recalled the only other time Ada had struck him. It had been two days before his sixteenth birthday. He had just been accepted onto the high-school varsity football team, and that same afternoon a cheerleader had claimed him for her own.
Ada had drawn him from the street with, “Come over here, child. I want to see what it is you’re growing into.”
At six feet, Taylor stood five inches taller than Ada. He was also as cocky as any fifteen-year-old who had just been kissed by the prettiest girl at school. But Ada Folley carried herself with a severe dignity that brooked no dissent. Taylor did as he had been told.
“Stop right there.” She leaned over the porch railing and squinted at where he stood in the front garden’s brightest island, the only spot not shaded by the pair of blooming magnolias. “You coming up on a birthday, ain’t that right?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“How old you coming up on, twelve?”
“I’ll be sixteen and you know it.”
“Bet you think you’re too big to be running down to Ada’s for her peach cobbler, you.”
“I’ll never get too old for that.” Ada cooked for the Revell family and was known as the finest chef on three islands. When the wind was right, her baking slowed traffic out on Highway 1. “You got one ready now?”
“Stop your dancing and stand still, child.” Light glinted off piercing dark eyes. “I got me the feeling you gonna start breaking some hearts. Yes, I can hear the weeping now. They’s gonna be tears shed up and down the islands, on account of the sweet boy the ladies will think they see in you.”
Something in those half-lidded eyes brought to mind the rumors of Ada’s mama, the fortune-teller and Lincolnville witch who had planted curses in her backyard garden next to her runner beans. But Taylor was cocky enough to sweep his hair off his forehead and pretend he could not feel the fear rippling through his gut like wind over calm waters. “Well, all right.”
She leaned back into the shade. “Set yourself down here beside me, boy.”
“I got to be getting—”
“You ain’t got nothing to do nowhere ’cept right here beside me.”
Grudgingly Taylor eased himself down on the top stair. “So I’m here. Now what?”
“You got some lip on you; I give you that.” The old rocker shifted beneath her. “You ever thought maybe you could save them ladies and yourself a whole heap of grief, give Jesus a chance to do His work?”
“Figure maybe I’ll do myself some living first.”
“That what you call sowing seeds of misery, living?”
He felt scalded by her scorn. “Sure sounds a lot better than what you got on offer. Crawling round on my knees don’t look like all that much fun to me.”
The slap came out of nowhere. A striking snake had nothing on Ada Folley. “You best be minding your manners. Ain’t nobody gonna sit on my front porch and go disrespecting the Lord, no.”
He felt like he’d been struck with an oak stave, her hand was that hard. “What’d you do that for!” Taylor had to shout the words to keep from weeping. “That hurt!”
“On account of it was meant to. Now you be listening good, boy. I stood and held your hand the day your daddy was laid to rest. I love you like you’s one of my own. I know you had it hard, and I know you got every good reason to carry your load of burning coals. But it ain’t worth it; you hear what I’m saying? I know what I’m talking about, me. I know all there is to know about harboring reasons to go revenging on this dark earth.”
“I got to be going.” Taylor stumbled across the yard. His back to the woman, he still refused to raise his arm and strike away the tears.
She chased him down the road with, “Mark my words, boy. You ain’t gonna be burning nobody but your own sweet self.”
ADA’S APARTMENT BUILDING STOOD ON THE SAME reclaimed wetland as the city’s assisted living center and nursing home. The buildings were separated from Lincolnville’s southernmost side by a broad swath of shallow lakes and marsh islands, now a dedicated bird sanctuary. Taylor climbed the open staircase and knocked on Ada’s door. To his right, the westering sun burnished the marshes into a bas-relief of gold and heat.
The woman did not appear to have aged a day. Nor lost a trace of her snappish air. “Been wondering when you’d come skulking round here.”
“Hello, Miss Ada.”
“Your momma know you in town?”
“No ma’am.”
“Then I guess I don’t need to ask how you be doing.” She turned and stumped into the kitchen. “You eaten today?”
“I’m fine.”
“I ain’t asked you that. I asked, have you eaten.”
The smell of fresh baking took him back what seemed like a thousand years. “I’d never turn down whatever you’re offering. You know that.”
She sliced him a piece of pie the color of old tar. “Get yourself into that while I make a fresh pot.”
Nowadays the dish was referred to by the ten-dollar name of flourless chocolate cake. Taylor knew it by the less elegant title of mud pie. He seated himself on a stool by the counter and dug in. “This is incredible.”
“Can’t be a good thing, losing sight of your manners so you talk with your mouth full.” She set a mug and a napkin down in front of him. “How you be taking your coffee?”
“Black is fine, thanks.”
“Like your daddy.” She stood watching him eat, then retrieved the dish and fork. “More?”
“No than
ks, Miss Ada.”
“Your daddy had himself the finest smile I ever saw on a man. Folks who didn’t even like him loved him. Spent all his life one step away from goodness. Like his son.” When the coffee gurgled, she poured him a mug. “Seeing a new lady, you?”
Taylor shook his head, no.
“Why is that, I wonder? You done grown into the finelooking boy I knew you’d be.”
He tasted his coffee. “I got tired of being alone whether I was with someone else or not.”
There was probably some Indian blood somewhere in Ada’s heritage. She had such high cheekbones her eyes were pressed up into almost Oriental slits. Which only accented the intensity of her gaze. “Sounds to me like you still be carrying Kirra’s flame in your heart.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Gone. That’s all I can say for certain. This time maybe gone for good.” Without asking, Ada refilled his mug. “I love that girl like she was my own brood. Loved her and raised her and taught her to cook. Seeing that girl give her life to Jesus was the finest moment of my life.”
Which, if truth be known, had been part of their problem. Especially after Kirra went and changed the rules. But Taylor knew better than to start down that road. Not with Ada Folley. “Her family’s worried about how Kirra’s gone missing.”
“Like they shoulda been back when she was young enough for it to still matter.”
“I’ve got no argument with that.”
“Well, I still got me a quarrel with you.” Her hands gripped a dishrag and began polishing a counter that already shone. “You tore that poor girl’s heart to pieces.”
“I could say the same thing about what she did to me, and you know it.”
“Almost two years on and you still ain’t faced the truth. You was the one went playing around with that Jezebel. Not Kirra.”
“But Kirra was the one who broke up with me, Ada. You remember that little detail?”
“I remember how you two always seemed to be either going apart or coming back together. I remember the sparks. I remember the love.”
That much was true. Their relationship had constantly been marred by quarrels. Taylor had had every reason to play the angry young man. And Kirra had been wild enough in her own right, rich and willful and rebellious. At least, she had been until her conversion.