“Gators,” I told Birdy. “Keep moving.”
She did. It took us only a minute or two to cross the strand, but the screaming had stopped by the time we exited the trees. We were at the edge of the clearing we had come to search, a building lot that had been elevated with fill, then tamped flat by heavy equipment. Beyond that were more trees, then the lights of the medical clinic—but no woman dressed in a hospital gown, no sign of the men we had heard yelling.
“Sound plays tricks at night,” I said. “Maybe they’re up on the road.”
Birdy switched off her flashlight and told me to do the same. “Even if they aren’t,” she said, putting the nightscope to her eye, “I’m not walking past that damn pond again. Gators, my ass!” A moment later, she handed the scope to me, saying, “This thing’s useless,” and stepped up onto the rectangle of packed earth, her short attention span now back on the subject of artifacts.
Looking through the night vision scope was like trying to see through a green marble. I fiddled with the focus without success but did decipher something moving near the highway. I lowered the scope and was about to use my flashlight when another eighteen-wheeler zoomed past and illuminated what I was seeing. It was a person running—a woman, which became apparent when she paused to catch her breath only fifty yards away. I called out, “Are you okay?”
It startled her—and startled Birdy, too, whose attention was elsewhere. “I’m not deaf!” she snapped, and switched on her flashlight. She was kicking at something on the ground.
“I’m going to talk to her,” I said.
“Who?”
“The woman we almost hit,” I said. She was jogging toward us now, attracted by our voices or the light. Didn’t say a word until her last few wobbly strides, but then spoke to us in a rush, saying, “I need to use your phone! You gotta help me.” The accent was Caribbean, a singsong rhythm that didn’t fit her urgency.
Birdy swung the flashlight but was polite enough not to blind the woman. She was pale-skinned, tall, and so emaciated it suggested anorexia or illness. I also got the impression her arms were heavily tattooed, but that might have been an illusion. The harsh lighting had distorted the color of the scrubs she wore. They were prison orange, not yellow. Instantly, Birdy, the amateur archaeologist, became Deputy Liberty Tupplemeyer.
“Mind telling us your name?” Birdy switched off the flashlight to calm matters, but her hardass attitude scared the woman.
“Don’t let ’em take me,” she said. “Even if you’re cops, don’t let them no matter what they say. Please.” Then backed away, taking nervous glances over her shoulder.
She was referring to the clinic, I assumed, or maybe she meant prison, but it didn’t matter. Her pleading tone was heartbreaking. The woman was exhausted, near tears, and out here all alone. I said, “No one’s taking you anywhere until we get this straightened out,” then walked toward her, moving slowly as if approaching a creature that had been wounded.
“You mean it?”
I told her, “I’m not a cop, but I want to help. Why were you screaming?”
The woman was still edging away and worried about someone surprising her from the road, which is where she was looking. She started to explain, “You’d scream, too, if they—” But then her breath caught as if she’d seen something, and she whispered, “Dear god.”
“What did those men do to you?” I asked. “We heard them yelling.” Then I told Birdy, “Call nine-one-one.”
The woman was focused on something in the distance and it took her a moment to react. “Not the police!” she said, then hurried toward me, pleading, “You have a car? Take me with you! At least let me use your phone!”
Birdy tried to get between us, saying, “Back off,” but I handed the woman my phone anyway, which surprised them both. Birdy’s body language showed disapproval but then softened when the woman hurried away to dial. “Poor thing looks half starved,” Birdy said. “If someone hurt her, I’ll have their ass.”
I was trying to eavesdrop when two shadows materialized near the road and floated toward us—two men who had seen our light and were closing the distance. At the same instant, a police car rocketed past, blue lights spinning but no siren, then braked hard at the clinic gate. Birdy saw the car, too.
“Sheriff’s department,” she said. “Good. I wonder if that trucker called.”
I listened to the woman say into the phone, “Answer, damn you,” before I told Birdy, “We’re not going to let those guys touch her. Are they orderlies, you think?”
Birdy turned to look. “Jesus, I didn’t notice. You have any ID on you?”
We were about to be caught trespassing, I realized, which didn’t worry me. Police would consider it a duty, not a crime, to check on the welfare of a pedestrian we’d almost killed, so I continued to eavesdrop, hearing the woman mutter a profanity when she got voice mail. Then she left a message, which I strained to hear, the woman saying, “It’s me! You gotta get me out tonight. Crystal . . . pick up the phone!”
Crystal? I edged closer, but there was nothing else to hear because a spotlight came on, panned the field briefly, then froze the woman in its beam.
“Brenita!” a man yelled. “When you gonna stop this silliness and come eat your dinner?” His voice mimicked kindness but actually taunted her. The woman, Brenita, stood rigid for a moment, then dropped my phone and ran toward the cypress strand where the pond created an emptiness in the trees.
The man hollered, “I’ve got your meds in my pocket!” talking as if he would reward her with ice cream, but Brenita continued running, so he said, “Shit!” then listened to his partner ask, “Who the hell are those two?” Meaning us. And then a second spotlight blinded us.
I turned my face away, worried that Brenita was unaware of the pond and of the animals that fed there, while Birdy went into full-on cop mode. She hollered back, “After you take that goddamn light out of our eyes, I’ll show you my badge! Then you can explain what you did to that woman—we heard her screaming, assholes!”
The lights went off, and I imagined the men stiffening to attention, before one of them replied, “How were we supposed to know you’re a cop?”
A minute later, I had retrieved my phone and was telling Birdy, “I think that woman knows Crystal Helms. How many felons you’ve heard of named Crystal?” The area code was local, and I was debating on whether to memorize the number or risk sharing my childhood friend’s number with police.
Birdy nodded, interested in the Helms connection, then added a link of her own. “The reason I didn’t see those guys coming was I was looking for more of these.” She switched on her flashlight and pointed it at a large conch shell nested in the earth.
“Look familiar?”
Yes, it did. The tip of the conch had been sawed cleanly, similar to the ceremonial shell horn we had found on Cushing Key.
Birdy had guessed right about where trucks had dumped the earth and artifacts taken from Sulfur Wells.
The next morning, from my SUV, I was about to dial what I hoped was Crystal Helms’s number for the third time when Tomlinson called with news. Ford’s retriever would be delivered by a van service around eight that evening, hopefully before sunset.
“Think you can handle the animal?” he asked.
Mindful of his comments to Birdy, I said, “As long as he doesn’t get too attached—I’d hate to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“Won’t happen,” Tomlinson said. “That dog’s sensitivity chip wasn’t installed, and I sorta wonder about the way his brain’s wired, too. It’s a match made in heaven, now that I think about it. Him and Doc, I mean—not you.”
I had met the dog, who was a stubborn animal, but at least he didn’t yap or hump, and I replied that I was looking forward to spending the next few nights at Dinkin’s Bay. Then asked about Ford, saying, “Any news?”
Tomlinson replied with a Ho ho h
o Santa laugh. “Doc never makes contact when he’s traveling. Like a sort of a religious thing with him—he doesn’t want to interrupt the flow of whatever bizarre experience he’s enjoying. Different planes of existence with that dude . . . or moral boundaries. I’ve never been whacked enough to inquire. Or had the balls.”
“There’s fighting going on in Venezuela,” I told him. “Almost a war, according to the Internet.”
“Perfect. Then our boy’s happy as a pig in clover. Probably shopping for a beach time-share, hoping the kimchi really hits the fan.”
“It’s nothing to joke about,” I said.
Puzzled for a moment, Tomlinson replied, “Huh?” Then said, “Oh. Well . . . back to the dog. The owner dude from Atlanta, he called about the delivery time. After a few minutes listening to that cyborg, I’ve decided to change his name.”
“Change the dog’s name?” I said.
“Of course! It would take a court battle to change the owner’s name. Where’s your head today?”
I was still confused. Ford had found the retriever starved and half wild in the Everglades but hadn’t named the animal during the week it took to locate the rightful owner, who lived in Atlanta. Tomlinson often said things that seemed absurd, however, so I listened patiently while he explained that the owner didn’t really care about the dog—why else would he sell him to Ford?—so this was a fresh start in the retriever’s life.
“What do you think about Largo?” he asked. “It came to me last night in a dream.”
I replied, “It’s a good name for an island, but shouldn’t you leave that up to Marion?”
“Why? You think Rex is better? Or maybe Ranger?”
I was thinking that Ranger sounded pretty good but didn’t say it because Tomlinson was implying that Ford and I both lacked creativity. Instead, I listened to him explain that the dog had been traveling south through the Everglades on his way to Florida Bay when he and Ford had interceded. “Next stop, Bogie and Bacall Land,” Tomlinson said. “Key Largo.”
I was on my way to Rosanna Helms’s funeral and had just spoken with Joel, then Loretta, and didn’t want to continue with a phone glued to my ear. So I tried to end the conversation, saying, “Lower Matecumbe might work just as well, then. Or Islamorada. How about we talk about it later when I get to Dinkin’s Bay?”
“I considered Matecumbe,” Tomlinson said, totally serious. “Cudjoe Key, too, which actually fits the dog’s personality, but only because of the movie. This is a whole new karma deal we’re trying to create, so the devil-dog thing’s out. Islamorada, however . . . hum. Kinda feminine, nice—but, hey! What about Ramrod—as in Ramrod Key?”
Thankfully, his phone beeped. A moment later, he told me, “It’s my pistol-packin’ yarmulke calling. Gotta run.”
Birdy Tupplemeyer, who had Mondays and Thursdays off, was spending the afternoon with Tomlinson but wasn’t going to stay late, she had told me. We had spoken only briefly. She was relieved that, according to Joel, Brenita had been found before midnight and returned peacefully to the clinic, where she was being treated for addiction and bipolar disorder. Because her symptoms included bouts of paranoia, it wasn’t surprising that we’d heard her screaming, although the two orderlies were still being questioned. For the same reason, the public defender had already asked the court to review Brenita’s case, which included several assault charges, along with prostitution.
Birdy had remarked on how unsavory a job in law enforcement can be, then asked, “You didn’t contact your archaeologist friends about last night, did you? When I go back there, if I find even a shard of human bone, the whole dynamic changes. That’s when we take it public.”
As I drove toward the cemetery, anything was better than thinking about the funeral, which I dreaded, so recent conversations pinged around in my head, vying for attention: Joel Ransler discussing Brenita and commenting on what Mica had said, telling me, With few exceptions, there’s no statute of limitations on federal income tax evasion.
Same as murder. Joel didn’t say it, but I knew it was true because of our conversation on the dock where Dwight Helms had died.
Loretta’s voice, and her odd behavior, soon displaced Joel. She had sounded nervous on the phone earlier that morning, telling me, The girls and me are taking the courtesy bus, so no reason for you to come to the services, sugar. Or even the cemetery. A woman’s not dead until her last friend is buried, so Pinky’s doing just fine.
Strange. My demanding mother had excused me from an obligation—something she’d never done before. Clearly, she didn’t want me at the funeral, and I shuffled through possible reasons but came up with only one: someone she didn’t want me to see or meet might be there.
Crystal possibly? More likely Crystal and Mica. Loretta had to have known they were out of prison, yet she hadn’t said a word to me.
Something else very odd was the comforting way she had said, A woman’s not dead until her last friend is buried, so Pinky’s doing just fine. What did that mean? Even before her stroke, my mother had chastened me with cryptic remarks, then reveled in my confusion, but now it was impossible to separate nonsense from wisdom, let alone an utterance that had the ring of divine insight.
On the other hand, maybe Loretta was just being sneaky again and laying a false trail.
I was thinking, Maybe it’s true what Mica said. Loretta really was involved with pot hauling . . . on the sales end, possibly. Yes . . . selling the stuff because she hates boats, and no one in their right mind would trust Loretta to drive a truck loaded with weed.
But then I reminded myself that Loretta wouldn’t have had to depend on her secret lover for a nice car and clothes if she’d had money. Arnie, she had called him.
I was mulling that over when something new shot into my mind: the oddity of Birdy Tupplemeyer saying, When I go back there . . . if I find even a shard of bone.
Why had she said I, not we?
Then I remembered her telling me she wasn’t staying at Dinkin’s Bay late enough to see me when I came to meet the dog. She hadn’t explained why, but I now knew the reason . . . suspected anyway.
Immediately, I grabbed my cell and called. I got her voice mail and left a message. “Don’t you dare go back there tonight alone,” I said. “Call me as soon as you get this.”
I hung up and tried Tomlinson’s cell, which went immediately to his new voice mail recording: I know why you’re calling and your suspicions are correct. A message would only murk matters . . . BEEP!
Talk about cryptic! I was so taken aback, I stumbled and stammered but finally said, “Have Birdy call me, don’t let her do anything stupid,” which sounded nonsensical, but that was okay because it was Tomlinson.
From the parking lot of Kirby Funeral Home, I tried Birdy’s number one more time, then turned off my phone and went inside.
• • •
THE TWO DOZEN PEOPLE who had attended services for Rosanna Helms were now reassembling at the cemetery, a modern place designed to accommodate lawn mowers rather than celebrate the dead who lay beneath plaques that didn’t exceed the height of the grass.
Dwight Helms was there, and I was careful to step over him before taking my place next to Loretta and her three bingo-playing friends. The ladies were dressed in their finest black and wore hats with lace veils. They had been whispering back and forth until I appeared, then went silent but for their sniffing. Loretta, however, was cried out and had no trouble saying to me, “This place is nothing but a strip mall for undertakers. Bury me here, I’ll come back and haunt you.”
She wasn’t trying to lighten the mood, my mother was serious. To prove it, she lifted her veil and shook her head at the indignity being forced upon Rosanna Helms. Her best friend’s coffin was elevated beneath a blue awning, fresh flowers around it that would soon be replaced by plastic—cemetery rules.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re too ornery to d
ie, and I wouldn’t come back here if you did.” Then I asked a question I couldn’t ask during the service: “Who’s that man?”
Loretta knew exactly who I meant: a tall man with wide shoulders who appeared to be in his eighties but still had a sheen of silver hair combed slick and wore a gray suit that was tailored to fit, a quarter inch of white sleeves showing and a blue hankie. Her veil couldn’t hide the fact that she had traded looks with him more than once during the service. Now he was staring at her again . . . or at me, although that was unlikely.
“What man?” Loretta asked, then shushed me when I tried to answer, saying, “The preacher’s ready, no talking, dear.”
I stepped back and let my mother have her way. Watched her and her best friends join hands: Epsey Hendry, Becky Darwin, and Jody Summerlin, all from old fishing families. Together, they became a single unit, four women who had weathered a lot of life together and who were set apart by their unity even in a circle of people who had all known Rosanna Helms. At that instant, the remark A woman’s not dead until her last friend is buried took on new meaning. I realized the three women knew my mother better than I ever would. They had shared their private lives together and knew Loretta’s secrets, the things a mother can’t tell a daughter. Pot hauling, selling weed was possibly one of those secrets, although I didn’t believe it, but I had a strong suspicion they all knew the silver-haired man. He was Arnie, I suspected, Loretta’s lover until one or both of them got religion and ended their affair—he was the real reason she had offered me an excuse not to attend.
I understood now. Surrounded by so much death, their past intimacy was—if I was right about the man—still important to Loretta and him, too, which no longer struck me as tawdry. To be loved and loving, whatever the circumstances, was worth the risk and more valuable than the wobbly tower that is morality. It caused me to feel softer toward my mother and reminded me to value my own friends and to revel in love while I could because the years were ticking past.
Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) Page 19