The Treasure Man

by Pamela Browning

  “I didn’t mean then,” Tara said. “I was thinking of now. I bet it’s wonderful in Sanluca, isn’t it? With the beach and all?”

  The last time Chloe had been to the beach was the morning she’d gone metal detecting with Ben, and as for things being wonderful, the house was a mess and her social life was practically nil.

  “It’s very nice,” she said, infusing her tone with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel. No point in dumping on Tara, who apparently had enough to deal with at present.

  “I’m glad you called, Chloe. I always feel better after I talk with you.”

  “Think of me as just a little ray of sunshine, going around and brightening things up. Phone me anytime, Tara. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “I’d better get out of this closet before someone figures out it’s my hiding place. Besides, it’s time to clean up the kitchen with Marilyn and Ella. I don’t like Ella much. She’s so prissy and never wants to get dirty. She said she was going to rat me out when I wore her favorite shorts and spilled strawberry pop all over them, but after I washed them she wasn’t so mad.”

  “Ella is how old now?”

  “Fourteen, but babyish. She’s never had a date or anything.” Clearly, Tara felt vastly superior to her cousin.

  “There will be time for that.”

  “Do you see many hotties on the beach?” Tara wanted to know.

  “Not one,” Chloe said. By now, she was familiar with the group of local young people who frequented the beach, but she wasn’t sure what Tara would consider a hottie.

  “I bet they’re out there. I could find a few.”

  “Probably,” Chloe agreed, and she was chuckling.

  “Uh-oh, I’d better hang up. Marilyn’s calling me. ’Bye, Chloe. Talk to you soon.”

  “’Bye, Tara. Behave yourself, okay?”

  A big sigh. “Okay,” and Tara was gone.

  It was time to get to work, Chloe decided. Her work centered her. She found depth and meaning in creating what some people said were magical compositions of sea glass, metal and precious gems. If she could earn a living by making things that brought pleasure and joy to others, so much the better.

  She hadn’t been at her workbench long when the sound of someone chopping wood outside her workshop suddenly made it impossible to think straight. Chloe got up and went to the window. A stand of tall Australian pine trees bordered the inn property on the west, and in the shade of them, Ben, newly returned from wherever he’d gone, was wielding an ax, his sweat-glazed skin dappled with sunlight that penetrated the thick fringe of needles. The muscles in his back were heavily braided and rippled enticingly.

  He must have spotted her standing there because he turned toward her, leaning on the ax handle. “Just splitting some of the old logs left when the park service cut down the trees that fell during last year’s hurricane. I talked to the park ranger and she gave me the go-ahead. The wood will make good fireplace burning in the winter.”

  “I suppose so, but does it get cold enough for a fire then? It sure doesn’t seem like it could.”

  “It will get down to the low thirties in Sanluca. Are you planning to stay over the winter?”

  “I’m not sure,” Chloe hedged. “A lot depends on my meeting with Patrice DesJardin.”

  “When is it?”

  “Monday. Five days from now.” She had been working feverishly on sketches and had several finished pieces to show Patrice.

  “I can finish chopping the wood later, if it’s annoying you.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” she began, but he held up his hand.

  “No problem. I’ll make a special trip to the home-improvement store in Melbourne and pick up some supplies.”

  “That’s a good plan,” Chloe said. She moved away from the window, and shortly thereafter, she could hear Ben walking around in his apartment downstairs. She wondered briefly how he filled his spare time. He sometimes left the house at night, and she had no idea where he went. Not that it was any of her business, but she was still curious.

  After a while, Ben drove away in his Jeep. Chloe, when she’d been working so long that she couldn’t stay hunched over at her workbench for one more minute, ate a quick sandwich for supper, then went to her room and lay down to rest her back. When she had revived somewhat, she retrieved her old diary from underneath the pile of T-shirts where she’d hidden it. She’d avoided reading it since that first day she’d found it, believing that she was better off not reliving her fascination with Ben Derrick. But she was curious, not only about him but about the girl she had been.

  Dear Trees,

  I’ve named you Trees, dear diary, because I love the Australian pines out in back of the inn so much. And paper is made from wood, and you’re paper.

  Gold likes Ocean much more than me. I am devastated. How can he not see that I love him? That I dream of him all the time? I am feeling paroxysms (new word!) of grief, and it’s so hard to keep Ocean from finding out how jealous I am of her. He brought her a candy bar. A Kit Kat. He got it on the dive boat. Says his boss keeps a lot of them on board. I want to go on the boat and see what it’s like. Then I would know Gold much better than I do now. I would understand what kind of world he lives in. I bet it’s wonderful.

  I love Gold so much! I want to cry when he doesn’t notice me. I had to rush into the pine grove so I could be alone today when he pulled my hair and called me Carrots. I hate my red hair! And my freckles.

  I may be Carrots to him, but he’s still Gold to me. Priceless beyond measure. When he looked over at me in the kitchen this morning (I was pouring his coffee), I wanted to melt. I spilled coffee on the floor, but he didn’t notice. He just said, Thanks.

  His voice is deep and sometimes I hear a smile in it. If he could know me, the real me, he’d love me. I’m sure he would. Sigh. Double sigh.

  I’m going to buy that perfume we saw at the mall last week even though it will take all my allowance to do it. Love, Fire (Chloe D. Timberlake)

  On the next page she’d drawn a picture of the pine grove, small but rich in detail, with a raccoon sitting in the cleft of two branches.

  She got up restlessly when she heard Ben’s Jeep in the driveway, shoving the diary back under the stack of clothes in her drawer. She’d been right not to read it; it was disturbing to recall how desperate she’d been for Ben’s approval in those days. Desperate and in love; not a good combination.

  She waited to hear the sliding door of Ben’s apartment grating along its track, indicating that he’d gone inside. Did he like to walk on the beach after dark, or maybe sit on the porch swing and gaze up at the plentiful stars for a while before bed? The ocean would be beautiful, the big breakers rushing over each other to shore. And the stars were splendid. She could glimpse enough of the sky from her window to know that.

  It was hot tonight even with the windows wide open to catch the breeze, especially in the upstairs part of the inn. After she was ready for bed, she turned off her light and tugged the curtains aside to admit more air. It was too hot to wear clothes, too hot to sleep, and she slipped off her nightgown and tossed it on the dresser. For a moment, as she stood in the window with the soft breeze playing across her breasts, she couldn’t stop thinking that it would have been nice to walk with Ben for a while tonight. Just long enough to make her forget about the lack of friends in her life, but not enough to start wishing, as she had done when she was a girl, that he was one of them.

  CHLOE WAS FERVENTLY thankful for a different kind of scenery in Sanluca than she knew in Texas. Though unremarkable in many ways, Sanluca leaned toward the picturesque: the white walls of the squat, square post office boasted a mural of the 1715 Spanish fleet; the old wooden store-building-turned-gift-shop sported melodious wind chimes hanging from the eaves; and even though the gas station had gone modern, you could still buy a packet of roasted peanuts to pour into a bottle of cola.

  Sea Search, Inc. operated out of the city marina and maintained a long, low building housing the treasu
re museum nearby. The bridge to the barrier island, site of Frangipani Inn and Lost Galleons Park, was reached by a long narrow road that meandered along the shore of Spaniard’s Lagoon and eventually intersected with the highway from the Glades.

  After the day she’d walked on the beach with Ben and cut her toe, Chloe was even more aware of her growing loneliness, so she determined that she’d try to find people with whom she had something in common. When she stopped in the gift shop, she learned that Gwynne’s friend Sierra, who had offered to sell some of her simpler, less expensive pieces in the shop, had a new baby in addition to the two toddlers Chloe had seen the last time she’d visited Sanluca. Sierra said, regretfully, that she didn’t get out much.

  One other possibility was Peggy, the cheerful postmistress, so after leaving the gift shop, Chloe walked to the post office across a parking lot whose hot asphalt oozed beneath her rubber flip-flop sandals. Though Chloe asked her if she wanted to have lunch sometime, Peggy was doubtful that she’d be available soon, since her husband was recuperating from major surgery and needed her at home when she wasn’t working.

  “Give me a call when you’re free,” Chloe told her. “You can come over to the inn and join Zephyr and me on our turtle walks.”

  Though Peggy agreed that this would be fun, Chloe still felt at loose ends, Wishing that she knew more people in town, Chloe drove home through the meltingly hot afternoon haze. When she reached the inn and saw Ben’s Jeep parked in its usual spot, she acted on impulse. She walked around the annex to the glass door leading into Ben’s apartment. Only a screen was between her and Ben, who was clearly visible sitting in one of the chairs, reading the newspaper.

  Before she could chicken out, Chloe spoke in a rush. “I was thinking I’d go to the Sand Bar tonight for dinner,” she said through the screen. “Then I thought—” She looked up at the sky, down at her feet. This would be easier if they didn’t have the history of her ridiculous teenage crush, of which he was blessedly unaware. She took heart from that notion. “I thought you might like to go along,” she blurted.

  Slowly, Ben lowered the paper, regarding her with mild surprise. “That sounds good,” he said. “What time?”

  Up at the sky again, down at her feet. A small red ant was charging up her instep, and aware from experience that its bite could cause a painful welt, she shook it off. “Seven o’clock?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.” She afforded him a curt nod and started to walk away.

  “Chloe,” he said, and she whirled around. He had come to the screen and cracked it open a bit. “Is something wrong?”

  “Nope,” she said as casually as she could. He was looking at her as if he could see right through her clothes to her skin. Maybe she should have worn a bra, but she usually didn’t when the weather was this muggy. Maybe she should have put on shoes instead of dilapidated rubber sandals, though they were the most comfortable shoes she owned.

  “Okay,” Ben said, still sounding surprised. “I’ll be ready at seven.”

  She managed a smile before she turned and fled to the back porch, where she bent to pet Butch before they both continued into the house. Why had she been so tongue-tied around Ben? What made her care how she looked when she was around him?

  Her previous crush on him, of course. That alone was enough to render her more self-conscious than usual.

  Back home in Farish, Chloe was known for her offbeat style, and she felt less self-confident without her usual flamboyant wardrobe. She shuffled through her closet, wishing she hadn’t packed so sparsely. Luckily, she’d brought a print scarf, which she threaded through the belt loops of her jeans. She selected a rhinestoned T-shirt, black. After she removed silver studs and looped a pair of sea-glass earrings through her earlobes, where they glimmered along with small gold hoops and another pair of green cat’s eyes, she was pleased with the result of her labors. She was trendy but casual. Comfortable but chic.

  She was slipping on her sandals when she saw her diary; it had fallen from the folds of the T-shirt, no doubt, when she’d taken it out of the drawer.

  Dear Trees, Paroxysms of joy! Happiness! Thrills!

  Ocean and I saw Gold at the gas station and he bought both of us a moon pie! I could swear that he winked when he handed me mine. Ocean says he only had a gnat in his eye.

  Gold was there getting gas for his motorcycle. I asked him if he’d take me for a ride on it sometime and he said sure. Wind came along and heard this conversation and said over her dead body would I ride on the back of any motorcycle, but she was laughing when she said it. Then she made Ocean and me get in the car and go with her to buy fertilizer for the plants. We had to ride home with it in the back seat and it smelled bad. I didn’t care because I opened my new perfume bottle and sprayed some on both Ocean and me and we giggled all the way home.

  I love Gold so much! I wonder what it would be like to kiss him. He has the most sensual mouth! Thinking about kissing him is all I do lately.

  Love, Fire (Chloe D. Timberlake)

  Chloe had to laugh at herself as a teenager. Surely there had never been any shallower teenage girls than she and Gwynne, plus she’d had no more idea about how to attract a man’s attention than she had of how to fly to the moon. Fortunately, she’d eventually figured it out.

  Nervous with the kind of anticipation she hadn’t felt in years, Chloe was ready half an hour before it was time for him to show up on the back porch. She’d spent extra time primping in front of the mirror, trying to recall what perfume it was she’d used to lure him that summer. To the best of her recollection, it had been something heavy with the scent of sandalwood and spice and not exactly suited to a sixteen-year-old would-be temptress. In fact, Ben needed only a whiff of it to wrinkle his nose in distaste. “Whew!” he’d said, clearly unimpressed. “What’s that awful smell, Carrots? Do you have a dead buzzard in your pocket?” Chloe had been crushed.

  Now Ben came loping around the corner of the house, and Chloe found it in her heart to forgive him for his previous lack of sensitivity. She reminded herself that she’d been in the throes of first love when she’d written those words in her diary, and these days, she wasn’t in love with Ben. Seeing him tonight was mere social contact, something to keep her from going bonkers as she adjusted to being away from her friends in Farish. Dinner at the Sand Bar with Ben wasn’t really a date. But it sure felt like one.

  “TAYLOE USED TO BRING Gwynne and Naomi and me here a lot in the summertime,” Chloe told Ben as they waited for their food in the booth where they were sitting. Both tables and booths were fully occupied on this sultry night, mostly by couples. Overhead fans languidly stirred the humid air, and the clack of pool balls resounded from an alcove where a game was in progress.

  “I don’t remember Naomi,” he said.

  “She got married right out of high school. She wasn’t here the summer I met you.”

  “Is that what people in Farish do? Marry young?”

  Outside, a flash of heat lightning lit up the sky. Chloe took a long time answering. “Not everyone,” she said offhandedly. “I didn’t.”

  “So you’ve never married?”

  She shook her head, hoping he wouldn’t ask why. She didn’t want to say that all the men she’d dated were losers in case that led him to the conclusion that she was one herself.

  “You went to college, majored in art and then what?”

  “I worked for a jewelry designer in Austin and eventually quit my job to take care of Grandma. I learned a lot about antiques while I managed the shop she owned for many years, and I also developed a healthy supply of patience. Grandma’s a dear, and I adore her, but I won’t pretend it was easy to sign on as a caregiver at the age of twenty-seven.”

  “Sounds like you had a difficult time.”

  “Not really, but I was itching to become my own person by the time she decided to go to an assisted-living facility.”

  “I can understand that.”

  The waitress, a snippy blonde, sashayed
over to the table, bearing their plates. “Holler if you need anything else, Ben,” she said.

  Chloe noted a certain tenseness in Ben as the waitress batted her eyelashes at him. At least the lashes appeared to be real; Chloe wasn’t so sure about the boobs.

  Ben seemed slightly embarrassed, and Chloe wondered if the waitress, whose name tag read Liss Alderman, was how he spent his spare time away from the house. She didn’t detect any intimacy between the two of them, just an unusual level of interest on the part of Liss.

  “Sooo,” Chloe said, drawing the word out after Liss had disappeared into the kitchen, “here I am in Sanluca, alone at last.”

  Ben salted his burger, and she spooned a dollop of chili sauce on her fried oyster sandwich.

  “It’s good to be alone sometimes,” he said.

  “Gwynne said you got married,” she replied carefully. “That summer when we met.”

  “It didn’t last long.” When she was silent, he elaborated. “Emily wasn’t easy to get along with, but she was a fine person and I hoped we could work it out. Well, we couldn’t, but we parted friends and still are.”

  She wondered why he’d married. He’d never brought Emily around to the inn that summer. His marriage had been sudden and unexplained. At least he and his ex-wife were on amicable terms. Chloe couldn’t say that about any of her past loves. They’d all disappeared from her life when the romance was over.

  “Emily lives in Colorado. I haven’t seen her for a while.”

  “She used to live here? In Sanluca?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. She worked at one of the citrus-packing plants. Head of telephone sales. How’s your sandwich?”

  “Great. It tastes like fried ocean.”

  He laughed at this.

  “Say,” she said. “Is there anyplace to get good Mexican food around here? I grew up on Tex-Mex and I think I might be going through withdrawal.”