Ron Base - Tree Callister 03 - Another Sanibel Sunset Detective

by Ron Base

  The white hunter grinned and said, “Sure you won’t have a gimlet?”

  “A what?” Tree said.

  “A gimlet,” Freddie said. “Do you want a gimlet?”

  “I don’t want a gimlet.”

  “Only cowards refuse to drink gimlets,” Freddie said. “They don’t drink and they run away from the lion.”

  “I didn’t run,” Tree protested. “I didn’t. I’m not a coward.”

  The white hunter grinned sardonically. “It’s a damn fine lion. Sure you don’t want a gimlet?”

  “Tree. Tree, wake up.”

  He opened his eyes. Freddie, still in her pajamas, was standing over him. “It’s six o’clock,” she said.

  “I don’t want a gimlet,” he said.

  “What?” she said.

  He got up from their bed. There was no sign of a campfire or a white hunter who looked like Sean Connery.

  “You’d better hurry or you’re going to miss the boat to Key West,” Freddie said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And what’s all this stuff about a gimlet?”

  12

  Just before dawn, Tree drove into the parking lot adjacent to the Key West Express dock. He locked the Beetle and then walked over to the ramp leading to the ticket office where other passengers were already lined up, tourists mostly, somber and still half asleep.

  Tree showed his photo identification—a requirement before they would let you on the boat—and paid for his ticket. He crossed to where the giant catamaran—“the Big Cat”—was docked, went aboard, got himself a coffee, and then found a seat on the upper level. The boat quickly filled with passengers. Presently, the diesel engines started up, members of the crew cast off the lines at either end of the vessel, and the catamaran moved away from the dock, churning out the harbor, past Fort Myers Beach condos lined up like white dominos along the shore.

  Tree leaned against a railing as the Key West Express passed beneath the San Carlos Bridge. A sailboat swooped past, shining in the morning sun, inspiring a flurry of excited waving from Tree’s fellow passengers.

  Tree found a seat out of the already hot sun. Not far away, three large men roared with laughter, enjoying their first beers of the day. The ferry finally cleared the harbor and the jet-propelled diesels went into action as the craft made an arcing left, picking up speed, Fort Myers Beach fading behind the wake’s creamy foam.

  For the first hour or so the sea remained calm, the sky clear, and Tree enjoyed the ride. He tried not to think of Elizabeth Traven or Susan Troy, née Cailie Fisk, or the half-truths he had told Freddie. He finished his coffee and then climbed the stairs to the upper deck for a better view of the sea. He inhaled the salty air, waving to the passing tourist boats and pleasure craft.

  At mid-morning clouds blotted the sun, darkening the sky. The wind rose and the sea grew choppy. The coffee sloshed around in Tree’s stomach. He didn’t feel well. He went back down to his mid-decks seat. That didn’t help. He felt queasier than ever. The Big Cat shook every time it hit a high wave.

  Finally, Tree retreated below decks to one of the airline-type easy chairs in the main lounge. He broke into a sweat as his stomach roiled violently. He stared at the floor, trying not to think about throwing up. He twisted around to identify the location of rest rooms, groaning, thinking about how much he hated water and boats; the madness of living in a tropical world defined by both.

  “Here, take this.” A hand held out a plastic bag. “You can throw up in it.”

  He took the bag as Cailie Fisk slipped into the seat beside him. He had a moment to observe her form-fitting blouse and jeans before he lowered his head into the bag and brought up the coffee and whatever else churned in his betraying stomach.

  Cailie put her hand on his shoulder as his stomach twisted again, and his body shuddered, ejecting more liquid into the bag.

  When it was over she said, “Here, let me take that.” She plucked the bag from his fingers and was gone. Great, he thought as he gasped for air. The last person in the world he wanted to throw up in front of, and not only was he doing just that, but she was helping him.

  She returned, handing him a couple of tissues. He pressed them against his perspiring face. His stomach began to settle.

  He said, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think? I’m going to Key West.”

  “You’re following me.”

  She snorted with laughter. “That’s rather arrogant, don’t you think?”

  He sat back, taking deep breaths. Around him, he could hear passenger voices over the throb of the jet engines. Voices that appeared to be enjoying the ride. He glanced around. No one else was puking into plastic bags. He felt foolish and embarrassed.

  “Come on. Susan or Cailie or whatever your name is, you manage to insinuate yourself into my life in Paris—”

  “Is that what happened?” She laughed. “I insinuated myself into your life?”

  “And the next thing you’re on the island. I approach you at the Visitors Center and you deny you even know me. Then you reappear with my son at the Lighthouse.”

  She stood and smiled down at him. “You think too much of yourself, Tree.”

  “Why did you tell my son your name is Susan Troy?”

  “Maybe that’s my name,” she said.

  “Then why did you tell me it’s Cailie Fisk?”

  “I hope you’re feeling better.”

  When she went to move away, he grabbed her wrist and that wiped away the smile. “Don’t do that,” she said sharply.

  “That’s how you knew I was in Paris, wasn’t it? Chris told you. You followed us there. But why?”

  Her face had gone flat. “Let go of my wrist,” she said.

  He released her. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

  “Maybe I’ve decided to move to Sanibel. Maybe I’ve decided that you’re not much of a detective, and there might be room for another detective on the island.”

  He stared up at her. “You’re kidding.”

  The smile had returned, brighter than ever. “Someone who can get things done, who doesn’t hide things, who can solve unsolved murders. I think I would be good at that.”

  She swayed off along the aisle. Several male heads swiveled to watch her appreciatively.

  Tree sat with unfocused eyes on one of the LCD screens in front of him. Two heavyset sports commentators, bursting out of shiny suits, silently opened and closed their mouths. They were talking about football he didn’t understand, on a boat he hated, in a state surrounded on three sides by water that made him sick. What was he doing here, bedeviled by a weak stomach and threatening women?

  13

  Tree stood, taking deep, gulping breaths of air. By now the boat had slowed, entering calmer waters as it approached Key West. He made his way up on the deck and was immediately hit by a wave of warm air and a gentle sea breeze that helped clear his head. He stood at the railing, and watched the tiny figures hovering above him, suspended in the blue Key West sky harnessed to brightly colored parachutes. Beachfront homes with screened-in porches were scattered among palm trees. Ahead on the left, a coastguard vessel lay like a roughly hewn piece of ivory at dockside.

  He came down the gangplank after the Key West Express docked and made his way along a covered walkway looking for Susan or Cailie or whatever the blazes her name was. There was no sign of her. Why? He asked himself for the hundredth time. Why all the dishonesty, the elaborate deceits? What was the point? Because he refused to sleep with her in Paris? He was a sixty-year-old man. She was a beauty in her thirties. Even in his wildest fit of arrogant narcissism—and there had been enough of those over the years—he could not imagine his animal appeal lay behind her decision to come to Sanibel.

  When he couldn’t find a taxi, a pedicab driver named Marco insisted Tree should ride with him. “Can you take me to the Southernmost House?” Tree asked.


  “No problem,” Marco said.

  Tree climbed into the cab while Marco clambered onto the bicycle, announcing he would take a route that avoided the crowds along Duval. Tree said that was fine.

  Marco started off, moving along artfully shaded residential streets lined with the traditional conch houses originally built by salvage wreckers and sponge fishermen from the Bahamas who had brought with them Florida’s most unique architecture.

  Marco said he was from Serbia, working in Key West on a student visa. The local economy could not get along without guys like him, he said.

  Tree telephoned Freddie. To his surprise she picked up immediately. “I’m calling you from a Key West pedicab,” Tree said.

  “So you are okay?”

  “If you don’t count the fact that I threw up on the boat,” he said.

  “You are not a man of the sea,” she said.

  “We will not be sailing around the world,” Tree agreed.

  “Is Elizabeth at the hotel?”

  “I haven’t checked yet.”

  “What are you going to do if she isn’t?”

  To avoid answering that question, he said, “I wish you were here. This pedicab would be a lot more fun with you in it.”

  “You haven’t answered my question. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” he said.

  “Sounds like this is a bit of a wild goose chase.”

  “I’m going to find her,” Tree insisted.

  “I believe you,” Freddie said.

  “You don’t sound very convinced.”

  “Listen, I’ve got to go. They’re holding a meeting for me. We’re about to sit down with Vera. Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck,” Tree said.

  “Call me tonight,” she said. “Let me know you’re all right.”

  The Southernmost House, in its brightly painted turn-of-the-century glory, stood at the corner of Duval and South Streets. Tree paid off Marco, wished him luck, and walked through the gate into the hotel’s courtyard.

  The Persian carpet in the Southernmost lobby matched the dark wood fireplace and the dark wood desk where a smiling young man said to a middle-aged couple, “The house was a speakeasy in the 1920s, during prohibition.”

  “Was that legal?” asked the woman.

  The young man—Kevin according to his name tag—smiled indulgently. “This was Key West, of course. So what was legal or illegal was always up for grabs. Mr. Al Capone himself was a guest. Someone took a shot at him right here in the lobby.”

  “I wonder what room he stayed in?” said the man.

  “We’re not sure about that,” Kevin said. “But Mr. Al Capone was here, that’s for sure. The man himself.”

  Kevin fixed the tourists with a town map, issued directions to the Hemingway house on Whitehead Street, and ordered them to have “a great day,” before turning his attention to Tree. “Welcome to the Southernmost House, sir. How may I help you?”

  Tree said, “I believe a friend of mine is staying here. A woman named Elizabeth Traven. Can you tell me what room she’s in?”

  Kevin’s frown returned. “That name doesn’t ring a bell, but let me check.” He went to work on the computer keyboard. Even before his fingers had stopped moving, he was shaking his head. “No, Mr. Callister. I’m afraid no one by that name has checked in recently. Also, we don’t have a reservation under that name.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Tree said.

  So much for quickly finding Elizabeth and putting an end to this, he thought. Now what was he supposed to do? If she wasn’t at the hotel, where was she? Maybe not even in Key West. The thought depressed him.

  Then he remembered the photo of Elizabeth with Javor Zoran. As soon as he saw it, Kevin’s face lit with recognition. “She was here last week, but not under that name.”

  “But she’s not here now?”

  “No, she checked out a few days ago,” Kevin said. “I remember because she was with Mr. Hank Dearlove.”

  “Who’s Hank Dearlove?” Tree asked.

  “He’s one of our local guides at the Hemingway Estate,” Kevin said.

  14

  The fine old Spanish colonial house where Ernest Hemingway had resided in Key West was at 907 Whitehead Street.

  Tree paid the entrance fee at the ticket booth. A white-bearded man wearing a baseball cap who could have been Hemingway’s brother stood at the main entrance doors. “There’s a guided tour in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “I’m looking for Hank Dearlove,” Tree said.

  “Hank’s conducting the tour,” the white-bearded man said,

  Inside the entry hall, more old guys with white beards wearing baseball caps nodded at Tree and directed him into a sitting room where a group of about twenty was already gathered. Tree inspected a salmon-colored settee, trying to imagine Hemingway sitting on it.

  A voice behind him said, “Everyone, listen up, please. I am Hank, and this afternoon I will be your guide into the life and times of one Ernest Hemingway, author, and Key West resident.”

  Tree turned to see a tall, aristocratic man in his sixties, pale, with blondish-white hair thrown carelessly back from a high forehead. He wore khaki trousers, sandals, and a flowered shirt that did not hang loosely enough to hide an unexpectedly generous belly.

  Hank Dearlove raised his arms as though addressing the heavens. “Hemingway!” He paused for effect. “That name stirs passions and contradictions. For some, and I include myself in this group, the name conjures visions of masculinity, romance, and courage of a sort we don’t much recognize any more. Maybe that’s what keeps bringing many of us back to him. Maybe we want the big game hunter, the deep-sea fisherman, the passionate writer in the Paris of the 1920s, the warrior, the journalist. We want this guy. But who is it we want? How do we put flesh and blood onto the mythology of our greatest American writer?”

  Hank lowered his arms and smiled. “Well, I’m not so sure how much flesh and blood we can provide Mr. Hemingway today or whether it’s even possible. No other American writer has been as inspected and speculated about, related and deflated as old Ernie. Yet I’m not so sure we know any more about him today than we did when he died in 1961. But at least in this house this afternoon, good friends, I can show you where he lived and worked. You are within the walls where he existed. Perhaps you will be able to feel his presence. He was here. In many ways, perhaps, he is still here. He haunts these walls. He haunts us all.”

  Abruptly Hank wheeled out of the room. “Follow me,” he called.

  Everyone obediently filed across the hall into the dining room where Hank briefly sketched Hemingway’s early life, including his childhood in Oak Park, Illinois; the mother who dressed him in little girl’s clothes (although not much was made of that); the father who committed suicide; the young man wounded in the Spanish civil war; the journalist sent by the Toronto Star to Paris in the twenties; his first wife, Hadley; her best friend, Pauline Pfeiffer.

  “Lust in Paris,” Hank declared. “Youthful Mr. Hemingway appeared incapable of simply sleeping with a woman; he had to marry her. So he dumped Hadley and married Pauline, who fulfilled the other requirement Mr. Hemingway had of his women: money. Ernest didn’t have any; his wives did.

  “It was Pauline’s uncle who bought this house for them,” Hank continued. “A generous uncle, no? Even in 1931, this was an expensive home—the finest in Key West. Pauline brought the chandeliers you see here, and the decorative taste, which may or may not be to your liking. Not to mine, but then I would not have so easily dumped Hadley, the most attractive of Mr. Hemingway’s women, not counting Miss Ava Gardner, of course. He was infatuated with Miss Ava, but I have my doubts whether he ever slept with her.”

  As he talked, Hank moved to a portrait of a dark-haired, mustached Hemingway, surprisingly handsome. “Now, of course, the prevailing image of Mr. Hemingway is that of the white-bearded old hunter. ‘Papa’ Hemingway. The famous Karsh portrait; the prototype for all aging writers, incl
uding many of the guides you will see wandering around here today.

  “But that is not the Hemingway who inhabits this place.” His arm swept up in the direction of the painting. “This is the Hemingway who lived in Key West. Young, virile, full of the juices of life. You study this portrait, and you understand how this youthful stud took the literary world by storm. A superstar, imbued with that rough masculinity, very much of its time. The same sort of manliness that made Gable and Cooper and Tracy movie stars. No Justins back then, Bieber or Timberlake. These were men. They went to war, and drank hard, and shot wild animals, and fished in the sea, and slept with any woman they could get their hands on, preferably a beauty. All gone today—more’s the pity.”

  A few women present murmured objection. Hank’s eyebrows shot up in feigned surprise. “Oh, my, have I offended some here? Well, I suppose I have, but it’s a minor offense. Remember, please, you are in Mr. Hemingway’s country for the moment, the thinking is old-fashioned and very different. Perhaps I’m merely giving you a taste of it; no more than that.”

  Hank quelled further dissent by herding his charges up narrow stairs to the second floor master bedroom. A ginger cat curled on the bed where once, according to Hank, Hemingway and Pauline had slept and loved. “Now, alas, only cats inhabit that connubial bed.” Hank in wistful voice.

  He brightened as he swept a hand over the sleeping ginger cat: “Behold one of our famous Hemingway cats. These are the direct descendants of the felines nurtured by Ernest and Pauline while they lived here. The more formal name for this cat is a polydactyl—a feline with a genetic mutation that results in being born with more than the usual number of toes on at least one of its paws. This fellow, as you can see, has six toes on his front left paw.”

  Several visitors duly petted and stroked the cat which stretched luxuriously, purring loudly, enjoying the attention.

  Finally, Hank led his merry band of Hemingway followers out to the pool house. “There on the second floor Mr. Hemingway wrote To Have and Have Not.” Another dramatic pause. “The worst piece of crap Mr. Hemingway ever produced, in my estimation.”