Key West Heat

by Alice Orr

  Winona appeared to have guessed what Des was thinking. He was beginning to wonder if there might be some truth to the rumors about her supposed remarkable powers of perception. He was also wondering what else she might be perceiving. Before he could venture a guess at that, Taylor appeared on the stair landing and began her descent toward them.

  Des had never picked up a date for the prom or had a real wedding where the bride walks down the aisle toward her groom. His life hadn’t been the kind that afforded such experiences. This moment made up for all of that. The window above the landing was made of stained glass in deep yellow and blue tints. The sunlight washed through those colors and down onto Taylor, making a shimmering halo of her hair. She had changed into a sleeveless top and a long, full skirt in pale peach. She was wearing sandals again. The flick of her coral toenails was just visible to Des every time she took a step forward.

  It was a simple outfit, decorated only by the slender, gold watch-bracelet at her wrist. Still, Des felt his heart cease its drumming for an instant at the sight of her. She might have been Cinderella decked out for the ball, glass slippers and all, as far as he was concerned. She was by far the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He knew that assessment must show clearly on his face and that Winona was watching him. He didn’t care. If he’d thought Taylor would tolerate it, he would have rushed forward and swept her up in his arms. But he knew she wouldn’t want that. He was lucky she had agreed to see him at all. He would have to content himself with this small piece of good fortune for now. In fact, after he told her what he had come here to say, this might be the last favor she would ever grant him.

  He had no intention of telling her anything here in this house, even though Winona left them alone in the foyer once Taylor was down the stairs. She made no secret of the fact that she didn’t feel like going for a ride with him right now. She had too many doubts about his intentions. She continued in that resolve until he mentioned that what he had to tell her had something to do with Lewt Walgreen. She agreed to go with Des then, but only for a very brief while. Des felt Jethro watching from the veranda swing as he and Taylor walked toward the corner.

  “This had better be as important as you say,” Taylor said once they were in the Jeep and off Elizabeth Street.

  “It is,” Des said.

  “Then why don’t you tell me and have it over with?”

  “What I have to say is very likely to upset you. I don’t want to do it while we’re driving along a public street like this.”

  “You have been upsetting me from the first moment I met you,” she said, “and that was in a very public place. What is so different now?”

  “Believe me. This is different.”

  They were headed east toward Angela Street. Des didn’t know why he’d come this way. He had driven pretty much aimlessly after leaving the Starling house. The cemetery was just ahead, a vast field of aboveground mausoleums very similar to the one in New Orleans. The bedrock of Key West, like the marshy delta of Louisiana, didn’t allow for much digging.

  “Pull up over there,” Taylor said, pointing to the side of the road near the cemetery fence.

  Des didn’t care for her choice, or for the irony it implied—that this could be the setting for the death of any chance he might have of a relationship with her.

  “Now, what is it you have to say about Lewt Walgreen that is going to upset me so much?” she asked when the Jeep had come to a stop and Des had killed the motor.

  “I should have told you this right off when you met him this morning, but I wanted to find out if there was any truth to it first.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “I still don’t know if it’s true. He could be lying.”

  “I said, just tell me.”

  Her voice was low but very intense. Des knew there was no way to avoid what had to be said. He looked across the patched asphalt at the sleepy street facing the cemetery. No one was in sight. If she made a scene, there would at least be no witnesses.

  Des heaved a sigh. “Well, here it is then,” he said. “Lewt Walgreen claims that he isn’t Lewt Walgreen at all. He says he’s your father, Paul Bissett.”

  If Des had expected hysterics, he could not have been more wrong. Taylor turned her head slowly to stare at the rows of mausoleums only yards away. The steely calm of her profile made him wish she would rant and scream.

  * * *

  TEN MINUTES LATER, they were headed toward Land’s End and the Turtle Kraals. Taylor was not surprised to find out that Des knew where Walgreen lived, after all. By now, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find out Des had lied with every word he ever told her. She was that suspicious of him. She even doubted his motives for finally telling her the truth about Walgreen. Des probably figured she would find out on her own eventually, what with a police detective checking out everything about her, and Winona seeming to know so much about whatever happened on this island. Or maybe Des had another reason. All Taylor could be certain of was that he most likely wouldn’t be thinking in a straight, honest line whatever his motives might be. She had come to the conclusion that he was so accustomed to subterfuge and secrets he probably couldn’t recognize the difference between them and the real thing any longer.

  Taylor didn’t like thinking that way about him. His actions had brought her to it. Now, she would be foolish to ignore the evidence of her own senses. She was even beginning to take seriously the possibility that he could be involved in what Santos had referred to as the “suspicious deaths” of April Jane and Violetta. That might also explain why Des had been hanging around Taylor so much. She had wanted to believe he cared about her. She didn’t believe that any longer. The more plausible scenario was that he wanted to keep an eye on her—and her family’s money—while he nudged her toward the spotlight of guilt for those crimes every chance he got.

  He could be doing something underhanded like that right now. Maybe he was driving her into a trap, instead of taking her to Lewt Walgreen’s room as he said. She considered telling Des to drop her off. She could get a pink cab or perhaps call Jethro for a ride, though she didn’t really want the Starlings to know what she was up to. Despite Winona’s promises to let Taylor fly free, she could feel how concerned and troubled Winona was about what had been going on these past few days. She seemed intent upon preventing Taylor from getting upset about things. She had cared for Taylor as a child when she was much more fragile emotionally. Winona might not yet have recognized how much stronger Taylor the woman was than Taylor the child had been. She might not understand that Taylor was equal to investigating this man’s claim to be her father, no matter how upsetting that claim might be.

  And, of course, it was upsetting. She didn’t want to think about it, really. She preferred to preoccupy herself with Des and Winona or whatever other distractions might be handy. Before long, she’d be pondering Jethro’s trips to his fortune-teller or the variation in barometric pressure. Speaking of which, she had heard somebody remarking about a storm warning. Hurricane season was still months away, but she understood there could be tropical storms or even tornados this time of year. The day had turned gray while she was napping at Winona’s. The atmosphere seemed anything but stormy, however. In fact, now that Taylor was paying more attention to her surroundings, she noticed how almost unnaturally still the air felt, like the steely calm she had imposed upon herself in preparation for whatever she might find out from Lewt Walgreen.

  Des drove them along a road next to the harbor. A thicket of white and aluminum and even mahogany masts stood straight up from the marina cove in the breezeless afternoon. Gulls flapped their wings vigorously to stay aloft without the usual hearty up-and-down bay blasts to soar upon. There was a strange light all around, gray with a bit of sun trying to filter through. This was an eerie day, both outside of Taylor and within her, making her feel restless and out-of-sorts. She was relieved when Des pulled the Jeep up in front of a shallow, sandy yard and a plain-fronted building in bad need of a paint job. He had
been right. This neighborhood wasn’t much like the other end of Caroline Street. Apparently Mr. Walgreen, or whoever he might be, didn’t live a very prosperous life.

  It occurred to Taylor that this could explain Lewt’s claim to be Paul Bissett. According to her understanding of the family estate, her father, if he really was alive, would be entitled to a small fortune. She imagined that a man who resided in a place like this might very well concoct whatever story he could to inherit a new and much improved lifestyle. Maybe Walgreen actually had known her family all those years ago. He could have heard about Netta’s recent death and figured that, with both the aunts gone, he might be able to trick people into believing he was the long-lost heir. He could recount family stories he had heard, the way fake psychics recycle scraps of information to fool their customers. Taylor would be on the alert for that kind of trickery. As for the possibility he could have told Des the truth, Taylor was not about to let herself think much about that. Her north-country caution was on full alert. This was a gift horse she would most certainly look straight in the mouth, as well as one she might not truly want.

  Walgreen’s room was on the first floor, in the back. Taylor followed Des down a hallway to Walgreen’s door. While Des knocked, she looked around. Through the window at the end of the hall she could see a rear porch facing other backyards of mostly sand and scrub grass. When Des’s repeated knocking brought no answer, she walked to the window and pushed it open. She didn’t hesitate a moment before climbing out onto the porch. Her pale-colored skirt might come out the worse for wear from the splintered, dusty windowsill, but she didn’t care about that.

  “What are you doing?” Des asked as she pulled herself through the opening.

  “I’m following your example at the guesthouse,” she said.

  “What if somebody sees you?”

  Taylor glanced around. As usual at this afternoon-siesta time of day, there wasn’t a soul in sight. She imagined that the especially humid and heavy atmosphere, along with the storm warnings, had most Key Westers planted in front of their fans and air conditioners for the duration.

  “If somebody sees me, they can call the police,” she said, feeling fairly certain that wouldn’t happen anyway. “I won’t be a new face to them.”

  Taylor walked to the window she had hoped there would be from Walgreen’s room onto this porch.

  “I don’t think you should do this,” Des said in a lowered voice as he scanned the back lots and the windows of the adjacent buildings.

  “I didn’t ask what you think. This Walgreen person is making claims about my family. It’s up to me to decide how far I should go to investigate those claims.”

  “I care about your family too, but—”

  Taylor interrupted him sharply. “That may or may not be true. Nonetheless, they are my family, not yours.”

  She saw in his eyes the flash of hurt those words caused. She wished she didn’t feel her own flash of remorse for saying them. Then his familiar impassive facade returned, wiping anything readable from his face.

  “That’s true,” he said. “I’ll be careful to keep it in mind from now on.”

  He stepped away from the window. It occurred to Taylor that he might take off and leave her there. A wave of anxiety trembled through her. She really didn’t want to search a strange man’s room alone. What if he showed up and discovered her doing that? What if he really was a con man desperate to get his hands on her family’s money? Would he hurt her to do it?

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Taylor whispered just under her breath. Another of her aunt’s Pearls of Wisdom had popped into Taylor’s head in a moment of fear and indecision.

  She pushed so resolutely at the window to Lewt Walgreen’s room that it opened more rapidly than she had expected, nearly toppling her off-balance. That also made more noise than she had anticipated. She scanned the neighboring buildings, as Des had done a moment ago. She thought she might have seen a shadow of movement in the upper story of the next house, but when she looked again she saw nothing. She hoped she had only imagined something there. Whatever the case, she was committed to this course of action now. She hiked her long skirt up above her knees and climbed through the window opening, thinking that, if she had known she would be engaged in breaking and entering this afternoon, she would have dressed more appropriately for the occasion.

  The room was what she might have expected in a building such as this one. It wasn’t dirty, though the simple furnishings were on the well-worn side. It wasn’t very personal either. This might be a place where somebody slept, but no one really lived here. It definitely wasn’t what she would call a home. Again, a flash of unbidden compassion overtook her before she could guard against it. She had deliberately hardened her heart to Lewt Walgreen. Ever since Des made his revelation in the Jeep, she had surrounded any thought of the man who claimed to be her father with a barrier of what was as close to iciness as she could manage. She had done that to protect her feelings from the kind of damage that revelation might do, whether it turned out to be the truth or was proven to be a lie. The lonely look of this room had found a crack in that icy barrier.

  Taylor didn’t want that. She was going to do what she came here for, and she wasn’t going to allow emotion to get in her way. It had been her intention to investigate. She was going to investigate. As if to prove her own resolve to herself, she pulled open the top drawer of the maple-veneered dresser that stood against the wall opposite the neatly made bed. She didn’t expect to find anything. If this guy was the con man she suspected him to be, he would have hidden anything potentially incriminating in some clever, less obvious spot.

  The dresser drawer she had opened was filled to about half its depth with carefully folded stacks of men’s T-shirts, shorts and socks. Taylor was mildly surprised. She wouldn’t have expected such a haphazardly dressed man to be quite so orderly. She gasped as a shock of connection took her by even greater surprise. Her Aunt Pearl had arranged her bureau drawers exactly like this, in carefully stacked rows, and never more than halfway full. Pearl disliked clutter and crowding in all things. It was one of the traits she did not hold in common with her sister. Pearl had even folded things the way the clothes were folded in this drawer, into thirds with the edges tucked underneath and out of sight.

  Taylor swept the piles together, as if to banish their orderliness and the uncomfortable recognition it had made her feel. She told herself this was only a coincidence, that the way a person folded his laundry had no real significance whatsoever. That reassurance did nothing to quell her uneasiness, especially when she saw what her impulsive movement had uncovered at the bottom of the dresser drawer. A flat portfolio, not unlike the one she had carried to Key West from the north country, had been placed beneath the underwear and socks. She didn’t kid herself that Lewt Walgreen had been trying to hide the portfolio when he put it here. This spot was neither clever nor unobtrusive.

  She took the portfolio from the drawer and set it on top of the dresser. She hesitated for a moment before opening the flap, then reminded herself of her resolve to investigate, and reached inside the portfolio before she could reconsider further. The papers she pulled out were as neatly folded as Mr. Walgreen’s laundry had been. They were also soft to the touch, like old documents can become. She unfolded the first piece of paper on the pile and sighed deeply as she read. It was a marriage license. To be specific, it was her parents’ marriage license, dated when she knew their wedding to have been and stamped with the county seal that indicated it was issued in Key West. Taylor’s parents had been married here.

  Taylor picked up the pile of papers and walked unsteadily to the bed. She was so numb she could hardly feel her feet touching the floor. She sat down on the faded bedspread with Lewt Walgreen’s documents in her lap and unfolded the next piece of paper. It was an identity certificate from the United States Navy, designating that First Lieutenant Paul Lawrence Bissett was to be stationed at Key West naval base. The date was several months earlier
than that on the marriage license. Taylor smoothed the document open very gently on her lap. When a tear fell on the paper, she brushed it quickly away. She didn’t want anything to damage these artifacts that were as much a part of her own life history as they were the history of the people who had given her that life.

  Beneath the navy document she found a color photograph. The tints had faded some. The edges were soft and frayed as if from being frequently held or even fondled. She knew the woman’s face as well as she knew her own, partly because it was so much like her own. This woman’s hair was straighter than Taylor’s and longer. She wore a white dress with a short hemline in the style of the early sixties. She had on a small, veiled hat—the kind that Jackie Kennedy made popular back then—and she was carrying a bouquet of yellow roses. This was Desiree Loyola Bissett on her wedding day. Though Taylor had never seen any other pictures of the event, she was certain she was correct in that identification.

  The man next to Desiree in the photograph was wearing a white naval dress uniform. The brim of his hat shadowed his face, but Taylor knew that if she could see the image more clearly, it would be the same face she had found in Aunt Pearl’s photo album—the one Taylor had discovered in the attic at home, probably hidden there to keep it from Taylor herself. The man in this photo was her father. He had his arm around her mother, and it was obvious from the way their bodies leaned into each other that they were in love.

  Taylor brought the photograph closer to her face so she could see every detail. They were standing in front of a white, verandaed building. It could be the place they called Truman’s Little White House, where the late president had spent so many holidays. That building was located on U.S. Navy property. Taylor seemed to remember hearing that her parents had been married there. Had Pearl or Netta told her that? Taylor didn’t think so. They had always been careful to tell her almost nothing about her mother and father. Her aunts had kept that part of Taylor’s past, like the old photo album, hidden away from her. Suddenly, Taylor wondered, as she really never had before, why she hadn’t made more of an effort to delve into those hidden recesses. Even that time she came across the album, she had looked through it just once. Then she had put it back where she found it and never took it out again. She also hadn’t told her aunt about the discovery. Pearl would have been upset, and Taylor didn’t want that.