by AJ Basinski
“That’s quite all right,” I interrupted. “We just want to get to our rooms. It was sort of a long drive over from Miami,” I added as politely as I could. I surely didn’t want the bellman to think that I was being difficult or that we didn’t appreciate his hospitality or that of the Inn.
“No sir, you just got to have some of this here fancy French champagne. Moet and Chandon,” Chandler responded very quickly, shaking his head as he did so. “It’s what we do here to welcome our guests to the Bonita Inn. It’s our tradition. Been that way forever as far as I know. And hell, if I don’t give you some of this here champagne, I could get myself fired. Now, you don’t want to see that happen, do you, Mr. Mario?”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not about being fired but I shook my head and said, “No, of course not.”
Chandler then motioned us towards two rattan covered chairs next to a small black table that sat in the corner of the lobby. Sun Li and I sat down on the chairs which squeaked rather loudly as we did so. As I looked around the lobby. I saw that the lobby was filled with sea related knickknacks, all sorts of fishing gear, life jackets and orange colored buoys. Some of these items were hung on the wood-paneled lobby walls, while others sat on wooden tables that clearly had seen better days. There were hundreds of various types of seashells, each marked with their scientific name on a small faded card, preserved in glass-covered cases alongside one of the lobby walls.
I watched as Chandler poured the champagne and walked over to us carrying two crystal flutes filled with the bubbling champagne. I thought to myself that this was not a bad way to begin this little trip with Sun Li. Not a bad way at all. And it sure made up for the thought of that body that had been found in the waters off shore just a few hours ago.
“You two on your honeymoon or something?” Chandler asked as he handed the champagne flutes to us.
“No, No,” I quickly answered. I glanced over at Sun Li, who had her head down and seemed to be blushing. That was the last kind of thing I wanted her to hear at least for the present.
“No, no,” I stammered again after a short pause. “We’re here on business,” I managed to croak out. It seemed rather ridiculous when I said that and Sun Li must have thought it even sillier as a slight smile crept across her face. She looked even more beautiful when she smiled. I thought, if nothing else, maybe she would find me amusing after all on this little vacation trip. Amusing was better than nothing.
Before we had left Miami, I had told Sun Li that we would be staying in separate rooms at the Inn. I also tried to make it clear to her that I was not expecting anything in return for joining me on this trip to Palm Island. Despite this assurance, she had been reluctant to join me on the trip. Several times on the drive from Miami I told her again that the trip was without any conditions or expectations on my part for anything more from her than her friendship. And not friendship with those so-called “benefits” that some people talked about.
For her part, Sun Li now seemed quite satisfied with that type of arrangement. And I certainly had meant what I had told her at the time I had said it. But, I also thought about what the poet once wrote, “Hope springs eternal.” Certainly, I had hopes that we would eventually be more than just friends.
“I was wondering about that,” said Chandler as he looked us over even more closely than he had before. “I was real surprised that they gave me two keys for two separate rooms. By the way, you two’s got the nicest rooms in the whole Inn. You two got the Gasparilla and Blackbeard suites. They are right next to each other and face the water. Real nice, you’re going to love them. You been to Palm Island before?”
“No,” I answered. “First time. A friend recommended we come here and stay at the Inn.”
“You’re going to love it. Yes, sir. You’re just going to love it here. This here is just like paradise on earth.” That was already the second time I had heard the island referred to as “paradise.” Having learned about the dead body found in the water offshore as we were checking in, I began to wonder if an evil serpent had managed somehow to sneak into this paradise, this Garden of Eden that everybody seemed so enamored with.
“I was wondering about that body that just turned up dead in the water near here,” I finally said. “One of the cops said it was a murder. I guess everybody is going to be kind of on edge until the murderer is caught.”
Chandler looked at me with a very strange expression as if he was wondering how I knew about all this. That expression on his face passed very quickly before he said with a gap-toothed smile, “Don’t worry, this here place is as safe as can be. You two ain’t got nothing to worry about. This here island is as safe as can be,” Chandler repeated. “You just enjoy yourselves. Yes sir, you and your lady friend just enjoy yourself while you’re here. Lots to do here on the island. Ain’t nobody going to bother you.”
After we had finished drinking the champagne, which I thought was quite good, even though it made me hiccup, Chandler picked up our suitcases again and began to climb up the steep steps to the second floor of the Inn.
“Come on up with me,” Chandler said as he lifted the two heavy bags into the air as though they were as light as helium-filled balloons. He then motioned to me and Sun Li to follow him up the creaking steps.
“Just be careful on these steps,” he said. “They are kind of steep and real old. They’re original, back to the 18th century or something, somebody once told me. You know, I got to tell you one thing, this here old place is haunted. Some nights, they say, you can hear the cries of a young Calusa Indian princess, who lived nearby here years and years ago.”
As we reached the second floor and headed down the narrow hall to our rooms, Chandler continued, “They say that Indian gal killed herself by drowning herself in Palm Island Sound over some damn Spanish sea captain. Seems like he got her pregnant and then abandoned her and went back to Spain to his wife and kids. Now, I ain’t ever heard her crying myself cause I won’t stay here at night, but they say you can really hear her wailing some nights. Real loud. But don’t be scared. She ain’t never done nothing to nobody. But if you hear some crying some night, you’ll know it’s her. Yep, you’ll know it’s just her.”
Murder and now a wailing ghost. I was even less sure now that this was the best place for us to be after all. But hell, I didn’t believe in ghosts anyways. I wondered whether Sun Li did.
I had never heard of the Calusa Indians. When I thought of Florida Indian tribes, like most people, I immediately thought of the Seminoles and the Crow. I decided that it might be interesting to investigate the Calusa Indians while we were on the island. Maybe Sun Li would also like that.
“This here’s your room, Mr. Mario,” Chandler said, as he showed me into the Gasparilla suite. “And the young lady’s right next door in the Blackbeard suite. Real convenient,” he added. Unless I was badly mistaken, it seemed to me that Chandler was smirking as he said this.
The Gasparilla suite was nicely furnished with a king size bed, a small writing desk and a tall black dresser with a large screen television perched atop it. There was a small three piece bathroom just inside the door. It looked more than adequate to me for a week’s stay. I assumed that Sun Li’s room was similar. And I was glad she was right next door. I also saw that there was an adjoining door between the two rooms, just in case something developed.
I guessed that Chandler thought these room arrangements were rather strange but that a little “hanky-panky” might still go on. I didn’t say this to him, but, of course, that was one of my hopes also.
Chandler deposited our bags in our respective rooms and as he was leaving he said to me, “If you need anything, just give me a holler. I’m here to 7 every night, but Sunday. That’s when I go to Church all day with my wife, Wanda. We been going for as long as we been married, some 37 years straight and I sure ain’t going to stop now. No sir, got to get to Church on Sunday, that’s for sure. You ain’t Baptist are ya?” Chandler asked.
“Cause if you is, you�
��re more than welcome to join me and the Mrs.,” he continued. “We got this new Preacher man from up in Gainesville, the Reverend Ike and, man, he’s got the gift of tongues. Yes sir, he can preach like nobody you ever heard before. Makes you want to be good all week after hearing him preach. All week.”
Before I could answer Chandler’s question about whether I was a Baptist, Chandler started whistling the tune to “Amazing Grace” and clambered down the steps.
I realized that I had forgotten to tip him, but decided not to call after him. Might as well save a few bucks I thought as I closed the door to my room. I heard Sun Li’s door close at the same time.
Chapter 4
As I was unpacking, I was thinking about why I had brought Sun Li here. The courtship of Sun Li was now the most important thing on my mind. Before we had left Miami, Doc Phillips had told me that he thought that Sun Li was “out of my league.” At first, I wondered what he meant by that. Did he mean she was too young for me? She was thirty-five and I was fifty-five. Did he mean she was too beautiful for me? She was like some tall China doll with perfect features and an incredible smile that caught you by surprise. And me, well, I did have a slight beer paunch but, otherwise, I didn’t think I looked too bad for my age. I was no George Clooney, of course. But I had to find out if Doc was right, whatever he meant by it. I felt that this trip was my last chance.
Sun Li and I had driven across Alligator Alley from Miami in a little over three hours. I had to laugh when Sun Li complained to me that she was disappointed we didn’t see any alligators on the road as we drove along. Most of the way on the trip, I had kept the top down on the Mustang and Sun Li’s long, black hair had wafted behind her in the warm breeze of just another sunny South Florida day. As we drove I became intoxicated by the smell of the mixture of her rose water perfume and jasmine shampoo. It smelled like a spring day full of new hope for the future.
It sure had seemed like paradise when we drove onto the Island. Lining both sides of the road were mangroves, pine and palm trees. Then we drove through a small village. There, the road was lined with small shops, cottages and restaurants advertising fresh grouper and stone crabs. As we drove past one of the shops along Palm Island Road, I noticed two, exceptionally well-endowed, bikini-clad mannequins, one blonde and the other a redhead, standing outside one of the shops. I had never seen mannequins quite like these. At first glance, I was sure that they were real. The mannequins were swaying sexily back and forth waving signs that described the articles available inside the shop. I passed by the mannequins too quickly to read the signs they were holding, but I assumed that shop was not selling clothing for nuns.
Because this was the height of the winter season in Southwest Florida, the sides of the road were jammed with hastily parked cars on both sides, forcing pedestrians to walk alongside the crumbling roadway, dodging parked and moving cars. I almost hit an elderly couple walking their small dog beside the highway, but I managed at the last minute to avoid both them and their yapping Tzu Shu.
As we drove over what looked like a new drawbridge, I immediately could see that Palm Island was nothing like the East Coast of Florida where I had been living the last few years. Doc Phillips had told me that the Island was a throwback to the “Old Florida.” He was right. Rather than steel and glass, high rise condos that blocked the view of the sun, instead mango groves, palm trees and pine trees lined both sides of the narrow, main road on the island. On the drawbridge, onto the island, I saw at least a half dozen fishermen with their fishing rods dangling over the sides of the bridge like some sort of strange antennae. No wonder Doc Phillips had told me that locally it was called the “most fishingest” bridge in the world.
I could feel my blood pressure dropping a few points for each mile as we drove alongside Palm Island Sound surrounded by all this beauty. But in a few days all that would change.
Chapter 5
Doc Phillips had told me that crime on the island was almost nonexistent. He said that the most recent crime that had everyone on the island still talking about had taken place a couple of months before we got there. It seems some not very bright ex-con from Ft. Myers had decided to rob the Bank of America branch which was located right smack in the middle of the island. I guess he didn’t realize that an island with limited access was about the last place to commit a robbery and expect to get away with it without being caught.
After he had robbed the bank of a few thousand dollars, he jumped in his car and headed back towards Cape Coral on the mainland. Even before he was able to get half way to the end of the island, a swarm of Palm County deputy sheriffs, who had been alerted by the bank manager, were there to greet him, blocking the road and pointing their .45s at him. Wisely realizing that the jig was up, he stopped his car and meekly surrendered to the deputies.
If that bungled robbery was still big news on the island, I just couldn’t begin to imagine what the effect would be on the residents and visitors when they learned that a murder apparently had been committed on the island. I continued to wonder if we had made a mistake in coming here. After all, we could have just stayed back in Miami at the Fontainebleau Hotel or some other chic hotel on South Beach. I had heard great things about the Fontainebleau and I doubted any murders had taken place there recently.
I was glad of one thing: I had brought my Walther99 with me. Someone once told me that it was the same weapon that James Bond carried. I was no James Bond, of course, but it did give me a sense of security. Even now the 9mm gun was sitting, fully-loaded, in its holster on my left hip, hidden beneath one of the flowered Hawaiian shirts that I had picked up in Key West a few months earlier. I called them my “Truman shirts” because I had seen pictures of President Harry S Truman wearing the same type of shirts when he stayed at the Winter White House in Key West in the late nineteen forties. If there was a murderer loose on Palm Island, with my Walther, I was ready.
I was very familiar with murderers. I had been a homicide detective with the LAPD for over twenty years before I retired to Miami. After a few months of retirement I had gotten restless and through a friend I was able to get a job as head of security aboard the Mardi Gras cruise ship. The pay was good and supplemented my pension from the LAPD. I also got free room and board aboard the ship while it was on its weekly runs in the Caribbean. Not a bad perk.
Most of the time, crime was not a major factor onboard the ship. But last year, I had investigated a possible murder on board the Mardi Gras. It was during my investigation of that murder that I first met Sun Li.
Chapter 6
For the next three days, we spent most of our time swimming in the Inn’s Olympic-sized, infinity pool that faced the waters of Palm Island Sound. I thought Sun Li looked gorgeous in her two piece, black swimsuit as we swam laps back and forth in the pool and then rested on lounge chairs listening to the piped-in elevator music from the Inn. None of the other guests in the Inn seemed too interested in using the pool so we had it all to ourselves most of the time we were there. Oh, there was the occasional old geezer who seemed to be gawking at Sun Li, but I stared them down and they soon gave up.
One day we decided to rent two fishing rods at the Inn and went fishing from the “most fishingest bridge,” the Palm Island drawbridge. I don’t think Sun Li had ever been fishing before, but she caught several snook, while I was disappointed that I didn’t catch any.
Those PTSD nightmares brought on by my mistaken release of a suspected serial killer, which still plagued me occasionally, seemed to miraculously disappear while we were on the island. I had always taken everything so seriously that I sometimes felt that I was missing out on life. I wasn’t going to let that happen this time on this beautiful island. I now had to agree with the assessment that I had heard more than once since coming on the island: Palm Island truly was a Paradise.
Unlike the Florida East Coast islands and resorts such as Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale, there are no high rises on Palm Island. None. The reality is that development is almost non-existent on m
uch of the island. In talking to some of the locals, I learned that limitations on building and lot sizes had been designed specifically to keep out the developers from up North who were anxious to come and build on one of the largest of the islands off the coast of Florida.
Apparently, those limitations had been successful so far. Palm Island was unspoiled, even more so than its sister islands of Sanibel and Captiva, which for years had been touted as the places to be to avoid the crowds. When we took a day trip to those islands, they were both choked with traffic and overrun everywhere with tourists walking and on bikes weaving in and out of that traffic
Having endured the congestion of the east coast for myself for several years now since I had moved to Miami from California, I was glad to be away from all that. I began thinking about maybe moving here to Palm Island permanently. If I could persuade Sun Li to join me, it definitely would be a possibility. I’m sure that I could pick up a security job or something on the island. I will have to look into it while we are here. And, I thought, maybe Ed Shipley could even use another deputy. I thought that I could work with him if it meant being able to live on the Island.
One day, Sun Li and I decided we would take a tour of the island. One of the places on the island that we visited was the Palm Island Indian settlement. It was located several miles down the road from the Inn where we were staying. The settlement had once been the home of the Calusa Indian tribe that Zeke Chandler had told me about. Before we took the tour I did some research on my own on the Internet. From my brief search on the Inn’s computer, I discovered that the Calusa were the so-called “Shell Indians,” whose culture and, and really their day to day existence, was based almost entirely on the sea and sea shells. Once the dominant tribe of Southwest Florida, they were virtually unknown today.