by Ron Base
“What about you, Callister? Will you take something?”
“Nothing except the answer to my question.”
Trembath frowned. “What question was that?”
“The question that went like this: what’s going on here?”
“Simple enough, old chap. Mr. Shah would like you to locate his fiancée, Elizabeth Traven, find out what the situation is, and persuade her to come back.”
“Persuade her to come back to Shah?”
“If it’s possible, yes.”
“Why would you think I have any chance of persuading Elizabeth to do anything?”
“Well, I don’t have to think, do I? It’s Mr. Shah who has to do that, and for whatever reason, he apparently believes your previous association with Mrs. Traven can be of assistance. What’s more, he’s going to pay you enough money so that you will think so, too.”
“I know something of his background,” Tree said.
“Do you?” Trembath sounded surprised.
“Miram Shah either is or was the deputy head of Pakistani security. I gather he has spent a fair amount of time in Washington interacting with the CIA. But you don’t sound like CIA to me, Mr. Trembath.”
He barked out a laugh. “No, no, definitely not CIA. British Intelligence a world ago. MI-6.”
“That’s what? Britain’s external intelligence service?”
“Correct. More formally known as the Secret Intelligence Service. I was assigned to Islamabad ten years ago, liaising with the then-deputy chief’s staff. That’s how I got to know Miram. When he retired, he persuaded me to go along with him and provide security.”
“And help find lost girlfriends?”
Trembath took the jibe in stride. “Let’s just say the job comes with unexpected demands.”
“What’s he doing on Useppa Island?”
“Why, this is where he lives, Mr. Callister. He’s fallen in love with your wonderful country, and one of your wondrous women, and now you can help him find her.”
“What do you think, Mr. Trembath? Any idea what’s happened to Elizabeth?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, old chap. I’ve been pretty much kept out of the loop on this whole matter.”
Chandio re-emerged from the house, carrying the gin and tonic in one white gloved hand and a gray-metal strongbox in the other. He handed the gin to Trembath and then placed the box on the glass-topped table. “Ah, here we are,” Trembath said, taking a long sip from his drink.
Chandio stepped away, standing casually at attention as Trembath opened the strong box to reveal stacks of hundred dollar bills that looked as though Chandio had just run them off a printing press in the house. Trembath grabbed at a wad of bills as if he planned to disperse them to the egrets flying past. Instead, he quickly counted out a pile of hundreds and offered them to Tree. “There’s three thousand dollars to get you started.”
Tree looked at the money in Trembath’s hand and said, “I’m not sure what I can do.”
Trembath just smiled. “Why don’t we find out?”
Tree took the money. He noticed Chandio. His sober face was devoid of expression. His black eyes, however, filled with a combination of fire and disdain for these duplicitous westerners.
6
On the trip back, Tree kept his eyes focused on Captain Jim’s back, while marveling how he once again had allowed himself to be talked into getting tangled up with Elizabeth Traven.
A former journalist before she married the now-deceased media mogul Brand Traven, Elizabeth had written biographies of Lenin and Trotsky. But inside the writer, beat the heart of a conniving, manipulative liar who could never, never be trusted.
The mask of her beauty allowed Elizabeth to get away with, literally, in Freddie’s estimation, murder. She accused Tree of being like most of the men Elizabeth encountered, totally infatuated, and thus blind to her devious nature.
Tree hotly denied this, even as he knew that as part of Elizabeth’s seemingly endless campaign to twist him around her little finger, she had once awkwardly attempted to seduce him. The memory of that night lingered, no question, but that did not stop him from protesting loudly that he was not attracted to Elizabeth Traven—he loved his wife too much—and even if he was, he was too smart to ever get mixed up with her again.
Yet try as he might he could not—or would not—resist the temptation. Was it the money? That’s what he would tell himself. But maybe something else as well, a strange alchemy that inevitably drew him to her. Plain curiosity, too, he supposed—what the devil was Elizabeth up to now?
He drove south away from the South Seas Island Resort after Captain Jim dropped him off, deciding that since Elizabeth’s house on Captiva Drive was nearby, he would stop by for a visit, and perhaps get some understanding of what this was all about.
Was she really planning to marry the former head of Pakistani security? With a former spy from MI-6 as best man? It didn’t seem very likely; there had to be something else at play here.
But what?
The great stone Captiva Drive monstrosity that was Elizabeth Traven’s sun-splashed lair stood behind a high wall and locked gates, giving no hint anyone ever lived there. It seemed to be on perfect permanent display, evidence of what the American dream, Florida division, might provide the outsized dreamer.
He tried the intercom. No one answered. So much for a quick end to this case, a fast resolution of innate curiosity. He had already taken Miram Shah’s money. He would have to find Elizabeth Traven.
Now how was he going to do that?
________
The house Freddie and Tree had purchased on Andy Rosse Lane was mounted on stilts, protection against the hurricanes that always threatened paradise. The house was their pride and joy. Freddie’s car was already parked in the drive. He found her in the kitchen, having changed from work clothes into her evening uniform— shorts and a T-shirt—pouring the one glass of chardonnay she allowed herself after work.
“You’re home early,” he said kissing her.
She finished pouring the wine and said, “Come on, let’s sit outside.”
“Is everything all right?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
They sat on the terrace as they did most evenings. Not far away he could hear the pleasurable yelps from tourists gathered outside the Mucky Duck for the daily ritual of the setting sun, the tourists praying to the gods for cheaper beer and better weather. The gods usually acted on the weather; not so much on the cheap beer.
Freddie stretched her wonderfully long legs and issued a deep sigh before she said, “I met with Vera this afternoon.” Ever since they returned from Paris, Ray Dayton’s widow had been keeping everyone up in the air as to her intentions for the five Dayton’s supermarkets located throughout the Lee and Collier County area, including the store on Sanibel Island.
“She says she is seriously considering selling the business.”
“I guess that’s not too surprising. Vera never struck me as the kind of person who wants to run a chain of supermarkets. Any idea who she would sell it to?”
“She might sell it to me,” Freddie said.
“Whoa, hold on there a minute. Are you seriously thinking of buying Dayton’s?”
“You don’t think I can?”
“Can you?”
“Let’s put it this way: there appears to be real interest from my people in Chicago.”
“You have people in Chicago?”
“Investors I’ve worked with in the past.”
“You would own Dayton’s?”
“I wouldn’t own it, exactly, but I would head a syndicate that would purchase the five stores in the chain, yes.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said, even though he was. “I mean, if anyone could pull off something like this, it’s my wife.”
“Well, thanks for that vote of confidence, but it is all in the very early talking stage,” Freddie said. “Vera is all over the place. One day she wants me there, the next she do
esn’t. One day she wants to sell; the next she’s thinking about hanging on.”
Tree sat there taking all this in.
“The silence,” she said. “What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. I’m excited for you. I hope it happens.”
Did he really mean that? He wasn’t certain. At moments like this Tree realized just how far away he was from the world in which Freddie operated. He wondered what the reaction would be if he went to Chicago looking for enough money to buy a chain of supermarkets. He wouldn’t even know whom to ask. Freddie did. That was the difference.
She sipped at her wine, and said, “Tell me about your day.”
“Rex has a new boat, and, of course, can’t get the engine started.”
“Of course.”
“I’ve got a new client.”
Freddie raised her eyebrows to encourage him to go on.
“The former head of Pakistani Interservice. Apparently, it’s the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA. His name is Miram Shah.”
“The former head of the Pakistani secret service is here?”
“He’s living on Useppa Island. They took me out there by boat this afternoon to meet him. He wants me to work for him.”
“To do what?”
“To find his missing fiancée.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not going to believe who his fiancée is.”
“Try me,” Freddie said.
“He says he’s engaged to Elizabeth Traven.”
Freddie’s face darkened perceptibly. “Elizabeth Traven is going to marry a Pakistani spy? I don’t believe it.”
“After I got back from Useppa, I dropped around to her place.”
“Oh, great,” Freddie said.
“She wasn’t there. The gate was locked. The place looked deserted.”
“And you’re going to do this? You’re going to try to find her?”
“What would you say if I said yes?”
She rose and came over and bent to kiss his mouth. “Tree, my darling, Tree, we are getting too old for this. I am sixty now, remember?”
“That’s impossible,” Tree said. “I know that’s what you told me in Paris in order to lure me into bed with you.”
“If I was trying to lure you, I wouldn’t tell you I was sixty.”
“You’re lying through your teeth.”
“Nonetheless, we could be on the verge of, financially, not having to worry about anything. I don’t want to spend the rest of whatever life I’ve got left wondering whether my husband is coming home.”
“I always come home,” Tree said.
“This from a guy who no sooner became a private detective than he got himself shot.”
“It was a couple of weeks at least.”
“Who was almost dinner for two alligators.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you about that.”
“And not so long ago lost most of his front teeth in a beating.”
“But the point is, I survived the gunshot wound. The alligators didn’t eat me, and I’ve got lovely new teeth that make me look like Brad Pitt.”
“No, the point is, you’ve been very lucky. But one of these days your luck is going to run out.”
“It’s going to run out for all of us,” Tree said. “It’s how you live until you die. That’s what makes the difference.”
“You’ve been reading Hemingway again.”
That reduced them both to silence.
“To tell you the truth, I’m worried about Elizabeth,” Tree said finally. “What’s she doing mixed up with spies?”
“It’s not worry,” Freddie said. “The correct term is obsession.”
“No, it’s not. I didn’t look these people up. They came to me.”
“But how do you think they got your name, Tree?”
“They say they got it from Elizabeth,” Tree said.
“Why is she giving them your name? And if this guy really is a spy, why does he need you? Doesn’t he know other agents who could find Elizabeth? And I don’t believe Elizabeth was about to marry some Pakistani spy and then, like some fluttery Tennessee Williams heroine, ran away at the last moment.”
“Do Tennessee Williams heroines run away?”
“Blanche DuBois did. How do you think she ended up in New Orleans?”
“Elizabeth is no Blanche.”
“She’s up to something, and that can only mean trouble for you. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I would stay as far away from this as you possibly can.”
“I’m going to make a couple of phone calls, that’s all,” Tree said. “Besides, I’ve already taken their money. Three thousand dollars.”
Freddie shook her head in feigned exasperation—or maybe not so feigned. “I’m going in to make us some dinner.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“I’m worried about you.”
“I keep telling you, Freddie. There’s nothing to worry about.” Was there? Well, actually there probably was, but not tonight.
“So if I told you that since we got back from Paris, you don’t seem the same, what would you say?”
“I would say that Paris wasn’t Paris this time—for either of us.”
“No,” Freddie said evenly. “I don’t suppose it was.”
She gave him a fleeting look and then went into the house.
7
On his way down Captiva Drive the following morning, Tree again stopped by the Traven mansion. The gates remained locked tight. He tried Elizabeth’s cell phone. It rang a dozen times. No one answered. The call did not go into voice mail.
When he got to the office, he sat for a few more minutes thinking about Cailie—kicking himself for not telling Freddie about her. He actually contemplated phoning her at work. But then what was he going to say? “Hi, honey. Incidentally, I forgot to tell you. The week we went to Paris to celebrate your birthday? I went out, met another woman, had dinner with her, and then went back to her hotel room where she bared her breasts and kissed me. I didn’t do anything, of course—except not tell you about it until now. And I’m only telling you now because I think she’s shown up on Sanibel.”
No, he decided, that was not the phone call he was going to make this morning.
His reverie was interrupted by the arrival of a tall, heavyset man with an impressive head of curly white hair. He leaned in the doorway and pointed a sausage-like finger at Tree. “You the detective?”
Tree looked at him. “Who are you looking for?”
“They said downstairs, you, the detective. Upstairs. Is that right?”
“I’m Tree Callister, I run the Sanibel Sunset Detective Agency.”
The man ventured further into the room. He wore a loose, collarless shirt that did little to hide the belly drooping over his khaki cargo shorts. His flip-flops barely contained feet the size of small boats. His toenails badly needed clipping, Tree noticed.
“I am Javor Zoran,” he announced. As though that explained everything.
“Mr. Zoran,” Tree said. “Take a seat, please. What can I do for you?”
Instead, of moving to the visitors’ chair, Zoran placed thick fists on either hip, as if preparing to engage Tree in a fight to the death.
“Tell me, how much you charge for this detecting?”
“Look, first of all, why don’t you sit down? If I can help you, then we can discuss price.”
Javor Zoran eased himself gingerly into the chair in front of Tree’s desk. Once settled, he looked carefully around him, concentrating on the doorway.
“You are going to leave door open?”
“Do you want me to close it?”
“I do not want anyone overhearing us,” Zoran said.
Tree got up to shut the door. “Is that better?”
Zoran seemed to think it was. Tree reseated himself and looked expectantly at his visitor.
“Okay,” pronounced Zoran. “Here is the thing. You are detective, I need detective to find missing person.”
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“What missing person is that?”
“A friend is missing person.”
“Have you contacted the police?”
The idea appeared to horrify Zoran. “The police? Why would I talk to police?”
“Because they are the people best equipped to find missing persons.”
“I come to you to find missing person. And you tell me to go to the police? What kind of detective is that?”
“I’m merely making you aware of your options, Mr. Zoran.”
“No, no police. I want discretion. You can give me this, Mister Detective Callister? This discretion?”
“I can certainly be discreet,” Tree said. “When did you last see your friend?”
“One week ago.”
“Where? Where did you last see this person? Here on Sanibel?”
“No, no. Not Sanibel. Key West. We were in Key West. You must go to Key West and find her.”
“Her—this is a woman I’m looking for?”
“Yes, of course. Only a woman can give a man trouble like this.”
“You think she’s still there? Still in Key West?”
“No, I tell you to go to Key West because she is gone, and I pull a big joke on you.” He glowered across the desk. “You are not dumb detective, are you Mr. Callister?”
“Whatever I am, I’m going to need more information than I currently have, Mr. Zoran. What makes you so certain this person is missing?”
“Okay, we go to Key West one week ago. We have great time together. This is a woman with whom I am very much in love. This woman change my life. I have had many women, but no one like this woman. The week comes to an end. I drive to Miami. Business. Three days ago, I am back on the island, on Sanibel. I phone her. No answer. I go to her place. It is locked up. No sign of her. She has disappeared into the air.”
Zoran slumped forlornly in his chair: the lover confused and hurt. “I don’t know what to do. How many detectives on this island? Only one I can find. You. So I come to you. You go to Key West, and you find her.”