Dark Storm

by Karen Harper

  7

  When Claire returned home from Steve and Darcy’s house, she called Tara to see if she and Steve could come out to the butterfly farm for a visit. But a friend of Tara’s answered the phone. She said that Tara had gone to bed with a migraine headache. Though feeling bad for her, Claire was actually relieved.

  She knew it would be better to go there with Steve tomorrow morning. He still seemed to be seething silently, ready to explode, not acting out his anger, but rather suppressing it. And some of that seemed focused on Tara. Suppressing his feelings was somewhat typical of a take-charge man like him. He was acting as if he were emotionally drugged. But in case he exploded, she had to accompany him to Tara’s. That way, she could be a buffer, if needed, as well as psych out how each of them were handling this tragedy. Helping Lexi came first, but Claire was worried about Steve and Jilly, too. No doubt, anyone in her situation would be concerned, but she had the extra burden of all that psychology training making her overly obsessed.

  But she felt it would be best if she stayed with Jilly and Lexi now while Steve went for his formal interview with Ken Jensen, who could hopefully calm him. Jace’s new wife, Brittany, and Kris Kane were at the house. Claire could tell they had already cheered the girls up when she saw them all drinking juice and eating Oreos on the backyard patio where she joined them.

  Both Kris and Brit had lively personalities, so that must surely help. Kris, an archaeologist, suffered from what was commonly called face blindness, a disability that kept her from remembering people’s appearances, even of those close to her. She would soon marry Jace’s best friend and copilot, Mitch. She looked the part of a Florida girl with her straight blond hair and blue eyes. She was even working on a tan.

  Brit had sharp blue eyes and a glossy mane of sandy-hued hair she often wore pulled straight back in a ponytail or up in a messy bun. She was petite compared to Kris and Claire. A zoologist who worked with big cats at the Naples Zoo, Brit was always so animated that she almost gave off sparks.

  She’d seen before that both women were able to translate facets of their fascinating careers to elementary school level. Both, Claire thought, would make great mothers someday. Before she sat down with them, everyone shared hugs and greetings. She wedged a chair in between Lexi and Jilly.

  “Butterflies are way cool,” Brit told the girls, evidently picking up on an interrupted conversation. “We love them at the zoo, wild ones and the ones we buy and raise, not that you can ever tame a butterfly. You know what? In the old days, the Greeks and Romans thought butterflies symbolized—I mean, kind of stood for—the human soul, like what is in people that makes them special. Claire, did you know the Greek word for butterfly is psyche?”

  “All my psychology classes and I missed that,” Claire admitted.

  “And,” Kris put in, “I have a friend who once worked at excavating—that means digging out, girls—a temple dedicated to butterflies outside Mexico City. It’s almost like people in the old days worshipped them.”

  “But not anymore, right?” Lexi asked.

  She still had that doll on her lap, but at least, Claire thought, she was showing an interest in something else.

  “Not anymore, not worship exactly,” Kris said. “Still, in some places like Korea and China—especially Japan—people are crazy about all insects, especially the kind with the beautiful wings. I mean, obsessed,” she added, emphasizing that word and rolling her eyes at Claire.

  “Obsessed how?” Claire asked. “I have a book on butterflies I’m going to read, but I never heard that.”

  “It’s true. I read a stat somewhere that something like ten percent of Japanese men are passionate butterfly collectors. They have clubs where they trade them. Some keep beetles, crickets and butterflies as pets and will pay thousands of dollars for a certain butterfly specimen. Huge prices online for them. I looked once. I remember one went for over sixty thousand dollars—probably illegally caught and smuggled ones—but I won’t mention how they display them,” she added with another roll of her eyes for Claire when Lexi wasn’t looking.

  Claire was grateful Kris hadn’t gone into how dead butterflies were exhibited or stored. The girls had mostly seen live ones, not the ones put in envelopes, chilled and sent far away for releases, not to mention stuck with pins and shown under glass among avid collectors, although they had seen Tara Gerald’s prize displays. But with Lexi, Tara could get a pass for anything.

  Suddenly back in her doll Princess’s lower voice, Lexi said, “If those Japanese people love butterflies best, then cats and dogs might like to kill them and eat them—the butterflies, not the people. Lexi and me think it’s sad they get caught with nets.”

  Claire saw Kris and Brit startle, so had Lexi’s doll been silent lately? Or maybe Kris’s emphasizing the word obsessed a minute ago was a tip-off that the doll had been speaking as a separate person before Claire joined them?

  Lexi went on in that awful voice. “Ms. Gerald said the nets don’t hurt them if you do it right. But I still think that’s like mean people catching good people and trapping them, like what happened to Lexi and maybe Aunt Darcy.”

  Silence descended with a thud. Claire’s heart fell, and she bit her lower lip to keep from yanking that horrid doll out of her daughter’s arms or trying to explain to Kris and Brit. More and more, Lexi was making her doll speak for her as she had not before with her invisible friend.

  Patience, Claire told herself. Patience and love to keep Lexi from slipping back more into her past with disassociation and hysteria triggered by fear. Yet Claire felt she herself had been snared by terror when what she, too, needed was a safety net.

  * * *

  Nick found the offices for Fly Safe on Commercial Boulevard wedged in among larger establishments and warehouses. Clearly, he thought, someone in this organization had money to own or rent a space in the midst of this business park. The sign in the single large window read Butterflies Are Free and So Should All Wildlife Be.

  He hadn’t called ahead as he wanted to explain himself on-site. He rang the buzzer and heard it sound within.

  A gray-haired, middle-aged woman with huge, horn-rimmed glasses that made her look like an owl opened the door.

  “Butterflies are not free, but should be,” she greeted him. “May I help you—if you are not soliciting.”

  “I’m attorney Nick Markwood. I wanted to discuss your domain name, Fly Safe, with someone in charge.”

  “You mean like it has to be patented or something like that? Not interested,” she clipped out, and started to close the door.

  “No, nothing like that,” he told her, wedging his foot against the door. “I have friends and clients interested in that name for their small company and wanted to discuss sharing the title, since—I believe—your endeavors and goals are very different from theirs. I’d like to discuss that.”

  “Oh. Well, maybe for a donation. I’m Nora Delancy, but you understand, I’m sure, that we have to be careful here. Eco-groups like us do have naysayers, even enemies to put it nicely, just as the birds and bees do.” She smiled at him as if she’d made a joke. He felt her attitude toward him shift. “Please come in,” she said, opening the door wider, “and I’ll get our board member who’s here right now. Just have a seat there,” she said, indicating a rocking chair, which faced another. Both looked like antiques, and the rest of the office furniture and decor had a “down-home” feel.

  “I’ll explain to Lincoln Yost and be right back,” she added, and disappeared into the back room. He could hear muted voices within.

  Nick quickly looked around to assess the place. Photos of various South Florida wildlife, even a dolphin cresting a wave. The endangered Florida panther drinking from shallow water in the Everglades. Several bats hanging upside down from a rafter. And yes, four pictures of butterflies. Also, a photo of what looked like what Darcy had described as a butterfly release. Weird, but it wasn’t at a wedding like Claire was talking about for Kris and Mitch. No, he realized as he stood
up and leaned closer, it was at a funeral, because the coffin had not yet been lowered into the ground, and he could see headstones. And the man releasing the butterflies sure looked like—was—Will Warren, the guy who had been at their house when the TV vans were there.

  He squinted to see what had been hand printed across the bottom of the picture: These butterflies might as well be buried, too!

  So, if these people could ID Will, would that mean Fly Safe had it in for him? And maybe knew that he was associated with Tara Gerald, and went out to the farm to free butterflies but found Darcy alone there, who protested, and one thing led to another and...?

  “Sorry,” the thin, very tall, African American man said when he came into the room, “but Nora didn’t get your name. I’m Linc Yost.”

  Nick rose and shook hands. “Nick Markwood, an attorney at Markwood, Benton and Chase here in town. Did Ms. Delancy mention I’m here for information and a favor—perhaps a mutually beneficial one?”

  “We’ve had this name for four years,” he said, gesturing with his big hands. “We thought about Fly Free but chose Fly Safe instead. All our indigenous wildlife—so much of it threatened—needs to be safe, which is the same as free in most cases.”

  “I can tell by looking around here—and your sign outside—that you are very dedicated to your cause. Do you promote it through publicity or active protests or what kind of—?”

  “Yes, anything we can do to stop offenders and get support,” Yost interrupted, as if he’d read his mind. “The unfair cruelties of expansion and aggression by so-called civilization need to be met with decisive action as well as mere words. So, have one of the rockers,” he said with a gesture, and they sat, but neither of them rocked.

  This man spoke well and with conviction. He had a lightning bolt shaved into both sides of his hair above his ears. He was dressed in new-looking jeans and a T-shirt that read Naples High School Golden Eagles.

  “You’re a NHS graduate?” Nick asked with a nod at his shirt.

  “A while ago,” Yost said. “I teach biology there now and feel I’m educating the next generation about the cause. So exactly what can I do for you?”

  “I’d appreciate talking to you about whether your project could see sharing its name with two pilots who intend to give private flying lessons out of Marco Airport starting this winter, since the goals of your endeavor would be so different from theirs. Maybe we could even work out a deal about their pulling one of those popular banners behind a plane for you above the beach once in a while. They’ve talked about filling in their flying time with that sort of advertising. Their main career is hurricane observational flights, but that’s seasonal.”

  “So they’re already working for a good cause. If we can be forewarned about devastating storms, that could help animals, too—if we can help them.” As rigid as the man was sitting in the rocking chair, he sat up even straighter. “I’d need to talk to others on our board, but it sounds intriguing. So, I assume you have a business card?”

  Nick nodded and pulled one out of his billfold.

  “We can always use funding and promotion,” Yost said, taking the card and glancing at it. “Besides, you never know when a fight-the-good-fight project like ours could use some legal advice, but I see you’re a criminal lawyer, and it wouldn’t be that. We don’t so much as trespass—unless our pleas and warnings haven’t been heeded. Our cause, our mission, is that important and sometimes that desperate.”

  Nick nodded. He thought he’d found out all he needed here—plus that Jace and Mitch, for a donation, could probably use the project’s name. He’d almost come to believe that this Fly Safe group would work hard to keep animals safe, but not at the cost of human safety. Yet the vibes of suppressed anger he was picking up from this well-spoken man, especially just now with the frown and steely shift of voice, made him wonder. Was there more than frustration and maybe desperation behind that controlled voice and pleasant personality for the Fly Safe cause?

  “Would you mind sharing a list of your board members?” Nick asked. “I would like to send them a letter of request, just to be certain everything clears. By the way, I see one man in that photo back there who reads books to kids at the library.”

  Yost squinted at the picture. “That guy is sure as hell not on our board! Actually, he’s part of the enemy army. He may read cute books to innocent minds but he’s one of the snakes in Eden—one hiding in a butterfly bush.”

  Nick didn’t argue because he didn’t want to let on that he’d just received verification to his silent assumption that this group could be militant. And, as he often did, he wished he had Claire with him to read this guy even better.

  * * *

  “We need a meeting of the minds,” Ken Jensen said at their kitchen table late that afternoon.

  Claire was grateful that Nita was still here with the kids—outside looking at butterflies—while she, Steve, Nick, Heck and Ken conferred in person this time, to be certain their investigation kept rolling. Steve had spent much of the morning at the police station, talking to Ken, and they seemed to have come to an agreement to work together.

  “I regret to tell the rest of you what I told Steve,” Ken went on, “that neither the NPD nor the highway patrol have seen any sign of Darcy or her vehicle. Claire, Steve told me that you found nothing unusual or incriminating in Darcy’s personal effects.”

  Steve still looked as if he might explode. His hands were clenched on the table; Claire feared for him despite the fact that Ken’s not searching their house himself made her think he believed Steve was not a possible suspect.

  “And Nick says he got a mixed message from his visit to Fly Safe and his talk with Lincoln Yost,” Ken went on. “By the way, Linc Yost is a former local high school basketball star who went to the University of Kentucky on a full athletic scholarship. He was good there, too. Can’t say I know him, but I have friends who say he’s an excellent teacher, gets the kids involved in projects like protect the dolphins, this and that.”

  “Did he play pro ball?” Nick asked.

  “Had an injury before the draft,” Ken said, shaking his head. “I’m sure that really changed his life, from possible big bucks as a rich pro NBA prospect to a teacher’s salary.”

  “He seemed on edge, but it’s a stretch to think his protect-the-flying-wildlife volunteer work would include kidnapping someone,” Nick insisted.

  “Or kidnapping those falcate orangetip butterflies,” Claire said. “I noticed in a book Darcy had that she’d been reading up on them, and they are the breed that’s most obviously missing from the farm—some of their cocoons inside Tara’s house, too, remember, Nick? I want to ask her about that.”

  He nodded. “It’s a stretch, but that needs looking into. By the way, this dolphin tie-in interests me. There was a dolphin picture in the Fly Safe office, though there were other pics of animals there that don’t fly. Ironic that I’ve been contacted at the firm to defend a man who is being charged with killing a dolphin. Heck, keep researching the dolphin angle. Are they endangered, even though we see so many around here?”

  “Got it, boss. I’m still looking into Fly Safe like you asked—especially since Yost wouldn’t give you the backers’ names. I’m tracking down Will Warren’s past, too. Looks to me like the guy actually lived in Japan for a while.”

  “Japan?” Claire echoed, and sat up straighter.

  When she said no more, Ken frowned but madly scribbled something down in his notepad. “I’d say there’s no connection between butterflies and dolphins, a stab in the dark,” he said. “But in police work we always say there’s no such thing as mere coincidence or circumstance, especially when we’re desperate. Everybody stay safe—fly safe—but keep me informed. So far, we’re clutching at straws—or in this case, at delicate butterfly wings.”

  8

  Claire’s body screamed with exhaustion and her mind was in a million pieces, but she fought to keep calm as she convinced Lexi to take an afternoon nap.

 
She sat on the edge of the child’s bed. Nick had said to let him know if she needed him, and that he’d be playing with Trey before his nap. Jilly was with Steve. Unfortunately, Princess the doll was in bed with Lexi, eyes eternally open and staring, her well-worn body carefully tucked in next to Lexi under the sheet. The only good thing Claire could think of regarding the child’s obsession with the doll was that it suggested she didn’t judge people, even things, by their looks.

  “Lexi, sweetheart,” she began, raising her voice over the rain drumming against the windows, “I’m sure we will find Aunt Darcy soon. We are all working hard on that.”

  “Maybe the bad person took her in a car, then a plane like they did me. So she could be really far away.”

  At least that was in her own voice. Claire had several approaches to take here, so she’d try the one she hoped was the best.

  “Wherever she is, we will pray for her safety. But you need to realize that the people who took you are either dead or in prison. It would not be the same people, so what happened to you is long over, and you are safe here with us.”

  “Daddy should be here, then I’d be a little safer. I know you and Dad take care of me. Nita, too. But I heard you tell Daddy when he left to go flying into storms to be very careful, so is he safe?”

  “You know your daddy is a very good pilot, and he’s with Mitch, who can fly planes, too. So—you’ve been worried about Daddy as well as Aunt Darcy?”

  “Of course!”

  The doll’s voice. Lexi reached over and sat Princess up.

  “Lexi, honey, I just don’t want you to—”

  “And I heard you tell Lexi’s dad, who lives here, that this storm is the way out bands of the hurricane. Is there a hurricane coming, the one Daddy’s flying in?”