by Ron Base
Table of Contents
Also by Ron Base
Copyright © 2011 Ron Base
For Vallée B
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
Acknowledgements
Coming Soon
THE
SANIBEL
SUNSET
DETECTIVE
RETURNS
a novel
RON BASE
Also by Ron Base
Fiction
Matinee Idol
Foreign Object
Splendido
Magic Man
The Strange
The Sanibel Sunset Detective
Non-fiction
The Movies of the Eighties (with David Haslam)
If the Other Guy Isn’t Jack Nicholson, I’ve Got the Part
Marquee Guide to Movies on Video
Cuba Portrait of an Island (with Donald Nausbuam)
www.ronbase.com
Read Ron’s blog at
www.ronbase.wordpress.com
Contact Ron at
[email protected]
Copyright © 2011 Ron Base
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval system—without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, One Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, M6B 3A9.
____________________________________
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Base, Ron, 1948-
The Sanibel Sunset Detective Returns / Ron Base.
ISBN 978-0-9736955-5-7
I. Title.
PS8553.A784S27 2011 C813’.54 C2011-906785-4
_______________________________
West-End Books
80 Front St. East, Suite 605
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5E 1T4
Cover Design: Bridgit Stone-Budd
Text Design: Ric Base
Electronic formatting: Ric Base
Second Edition
For Vallée B
You left too early, old friend.
1
It begins in darkness,” Tree Callister said, seated behind his desk on the second floor of the Sanibel-Captiva Chamber of Commerce Visitors Center. “Then a door opens and there is light, and a lone rider appears out of the desert.”
“John Wayne as Ethan Edwards,” Rex Baxter said. Rex was the president of the Sanibel-Captiva Chamber of Commerce. A former actor in B-pictures, he and Tree had been friends ever since Tree was a reporter in Chicago and appeared on Rex’s afternoon movie show on local TV.
Tree said: “The Searchers isn’t about hate and revenge versus love and forgiveness. It’s about death. We come through darkness briefly into light. That door soon closes, and we are in darkness again. Life and death.”
“John Wayne didn’t like horses,” Rex Baxter said.
“What do you mean he didn’t like horses?” Todd Jackson, the general manager of Sanibel Biohazard, sounded shocked. “He was John Wayne, for Pete’s sake.”
“John Wayne didn’t like horses,” Rex repeated with the patient calm of a man who knows what he is talking about.
“He spent his life sitting on a horse. How could he not like horses?”
“Maybe that’s why he didn’t like them,” Rex said. “I read that somewhere. Drove him crazy, those horses. He preferred his yacht. A converted minesweeper.”
“John Wayne on a yacht,” Todd said. He sounded deflated. “I don’t believe it.”
“With the Duke you get a kind of authoritative masculinity totally absent from the screen today,” Rex continued. “It’s laughed at now. If Duke had doubts or second thoughts, he kept his mouth shut about them. He just wrinkled his brow, looked off into the distance and then saddled up and went out and did what needed to be done. Something kind of reassuring about that.”
Todd sipped his coffee and said, “You know about these things, Tree. Did John Wayne like horses?”
“When I was a young reporter at the Trib,” Tree said, “they sent me to interview Wayne at his home in Newport Beach, California.”
Rex looked at him. “I didn’t know that.”
“This was before I knew you. You’re right about the horses. He looked much more like a successful Republican businessman than he did the quintessential cowboy star. He made me drink a lot of tequila. Then he took me out onto a terrace that overlooked the water. Across the bay was an old-fashioned pavilion. The Duke said he used to go dancing over there as a kid. He threw his arm around me and said, ‘These days, the only two things lit up around here at night are that pavilion—and the old Duke!’”
Everyone laughed. Rex slapped his knees and said, “Well, John Wayne is long gone and the world is a different place. The Duke was lucky. He only had to kiss girls, ride horses, and shoot people. I have to worry about the annual Kiwanis spaghetti dinner.”
“Yeah, I should get to the office,” Todd said. “I’ve got a job over in Lehigh Acres. Elderly woman died in her apartment. No one found her for a week.”
“Sad,” Rex said. “You run out of options. There comes a day and no matter what, you just can’t get through. The door closes. It’s permanent darkness. Even John Wayne couldn’t avoid it. Then what?”
“Then you call me in, and I clean up the mess,” Todd said.
A white-haired man appeared in the doorway. Ray Dayton, owner of Dayton’s supermarket, focused his laser-like gaze on Rex and said, “I thought we were picking up the spaghetti sauce this morning.”
Tree’s wife, Freddie, worked for Ray at Dayton’s. Tree and Ray did not get along. Ray thought Tree was a loser who did not deserve to be married to Freddie. Tree thought Ray was a pompous, self-important fool who happened to be rich and employ his wife.
“And good morning to you, too, Ray,” Rex said. He looked at his watch. “Sorry. The time got away from me.” He pointed a finger at Tree. “You’re volunteering to help us out with the Kiwanis spaghetti dinner.”
“I am?” Tree said.
“We need another salad guy,” Todd said. “I just hope you’re up to the challenge.”
Tree looked at Ray. “Better make sure it’s all right with Ray.”
Ray shifted his tight jaw around and studied a point somewhere above Tree’s head. “We can use all the help we can get,” he mumbled.
Rex rose to his feet. “Okay, it’s done. Tree, you’re officia
lly volunteering for salad duty. Ray, let’s go get that sauce. I think we’re going to have our biggest year ever.”
“You say that every year,” Todd said.
Ray abruptly turned and headed down the stairs. Rex and Todd traded glances.
“Don’t know what’s wrong with him lately,” Rex said.
“He’s a jerk,” Todd pronounced. “A character defect Ray’s had to live with his entire life.”
“Or maybe home trouble,” Rex said.
“You speak from experience?” Todd said.
“Lots of experience. Too much experience.” Rex started for the door. “Come on, Todd. Let’s get out of here so Tree can get to work and pay the high rent I charge him every month.”
“Yeah, the clients are lined up out the door,” Todd said.
“Those are called tourists,” Rex said.
Rex and Todd left Tree alone in his office. He swiveled around in his chair, drank more of the Starbucks coffee Rex brought each morning, and stared out the window, contemplating the state of his life. Although he had recently been in the news, saving a twelve-year-old boy from the clutches of a gang of body parts dealers, the notoriety had so far failed to attract new clients to the Sanibel Sunset Detective Agency.
Tree had started the agency after arriving on the island with his wife, the remarkable Fredryka Stayner, known to all as Freddie. Tired of the grind of big city corporate life with a large supermarket chain, Freddie, on a wild whim, had taken a job running Dayton’s for Ray Dayton.
Tree had just turned sixty, and even though he had come to Sanibel often as a child, he felt very much the outsider here, robbed of his lifelong identity as a Chicago newspaper reporter, cast into a wondrous but strange world; an old world really, lost and found on these barrier islands, a world without strip malls or theme parks or fast food, where what was once natural and true about Florida survived still.
He had arrived in this world and loved it, but beneath its bright sun he existed in darkness and confusion, feeling adrift in paradise.
Thus, the Sanibel Sunset Detective was born amid derisive snickers and much head shaking. He couldn’t really blame anyone for the way they reacted. After all, what did he know about being a detective? And who needed a detective on Sanibel Island, not exactly America’s crime capital?
No one apparently. At least not lately.
Thus W. Tremain Callister, Esq.—Tree—had time to think about John Wayne and that night at Newport Beach. How vivid it still seemed, and yet how far away it was, another time, featuring a young man long gone and a movie icon so much a part of celluloid legend it seemed hard to imagine he was ever a living, breathing human being.
Tree could barely remember anything about his children or wife from that time, and yet he clearly recalled every detail of his encounter with John Wayne. Crazy. Ridiculous. Unfair to children and former wives. After all, the children and even the ex-wives remained; the movie icons faded.
Tree heard something and looked up to see a big woman fill the doorway. He hadn’t heard her come up the stairs, although given the size of her, it was surprising he hadn’t.
As she stood there, the woman seemed at a loss for words, as though in looking at Tree she had seen something she had not expected to see.
“Hi,” Tree said. “What can I do for you?”
That appeared to shake the woman out of her reverie.
“I’m looking for help,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Could you give me directions?”
Tree regarded her with a quizzical expression. “They can help you downstairs.”
The woman lumbered into the room. “I’m lost,” she said. “Lost in your eyes.”
For a moment, his visitor’s rugged face remained solemn. Then it broke into a crooked grin. “I’m kidding you,” she said.
She was three inches taller than Tree, which made her about six feet, four inches, and weighing in at over two hundred pounds. The bright aqua-colored pantsuit would make her visible for miles. Short-cropped coppery hair framed a tough, masculine face, its surface as pitted and scarred as a moonscape. She reminded Tree of the French actor Jean Gabin; Jean in drag.
“Sit down, miss—”
“Clowers,” she said. “Ms. Ferne Clowers.” Her voice was a deep growl, the result of many years spent filling her throat with cigarette smoke. She settled into the chair, shifting around broad shoulders. “You’re Tree Callister?”
“That’s right,” he said.
“One of the Sanibel Sunset detectives?”
“I’m the Sanibel Sunset Detective,” he said.
That unleashed a smile that would send small children screaming in terror.
“Exactly,” she said. “That’s what I need, someone who can take care of himself.”
Could Tree Callister take care of himself? Most days he doubted it, but Ferne Clowers didn’t need to know that.
“I read about you in the papers.” The craggy smile shrank into something smaller and more secretive and surprisingly feminine. “Someone shot you.”
“Yes,” Tree said.
“A man of action,” she said.
That was the problem with being shot in South Florida. Everyone assumed that denoted some sort of tough guy persona. As far as he could ascertain, having survived the experience, it merely confirmed that he could stop a bullet, which did not require much in the way of toughness. It involved no more than being in the way of the bullet.
“I’ve got to meet someone,” Ferne Clowers said.
“Okay,” Tree said.
“I don’t want to meet this person alone. That’s where you come in, see? I want to hire you to come along with me.”
“To accompany you to this meeting?”
“Won’t take long. The afternoon, maybe”
“Where?”
“Matlacha.”
“On Pine Island.”
“Take us about forty minutes.”
“Why don’t you want to meet this person alone?”
“What difference does it make?”
Tree said, “I have a simple rule of thumb, Ms. Clowers. Never walk into a situation without knowing how to walk out again.”
Which wasn’t quite true. Tree recently had walked into a number of situations he had no idea how to get out of, accounting, perhaps, for how he got shot. Yet even he, dumb as he was about these things, required more information than Ferne Clowers so far was willing to provide.
“You’ll walk out all right,” she said. “Slippery’s harmless enough, I suppose.”
“Slippery?”
“Bailey Street. Everyone calls him Slippery.”
“Slippery Street?”
She did not appear to recognize the irony. “He owes me money,” she said. “I sold him a boat last month and he’s been making trouble about it ever since. Finally, he’s agreed to pay. But like I say, I don’t want to go there alone. I’m a woman after all. Anything can happen. I need a man of action at my side.”
“I don’t know how much of a man of action I’m going to be for you,” Tree said.
Ferne said, “You’ll have to do. What sort of rates do you charge?”
“Two hundred dollars a day, plus expenses,” Tree said.
“Here’s what I propose,” Ferne Clowers said. “I will pay you five hundred dollars in cash. Two hundred and fifty dollars now. The rest as soon as we’re finished with Slippery. That’s not bad money for an afternoon’s work.”
“When do you want to do this?”
“Now. This afternoon,” Ferne said. As though he should have known.
She opened her handbag, reached in, withdrew a wad of cash and proceeded to place two one hundred dollar bills on his desk. They were followed by two twenties and a ten.
Tree put on his reading glasses for a better view of the money. “That’s not much notice,” he said.
“I’m interrupting a very busy day, I’m sure.” Not too sarcastic, accompanied by a disarming smile.
Tree r
emoved his glasses and scooped up the bills, dropping them into the top desk drawer. Ferne announced they would drive out to Matlacha in her car. She would drop him back at the chamber as soon as they finished. This was reasonable, Tree decided, since Ferne would never fit comfortably into his Volkswagen Beetle.
“Okay,” Tree said. “Let’s get going.”
Ferne was on her feet storming out the door. In the outer office, one of the chamber’s volunteers gave a start as Ferne breezed down the stairs. Tree locked the office before following. As he descended the stairs, he saw the volunteer shaking his head.
Outside, Ferne charged around the corner of the Visitors Center to where she had parked her car, a dazzling 1985 convertible Cadillac Biarritz Eldorado, black, with a cherry-red leather interior bright enough to make Tree squint.
“You don’t see a whole lot of these around,” Tree said.
“One in a million, like me,” Ferne said. “Hop in. I’ll take you for a ride.”
Tree said he hoped she was kidding. She just grinned as she gunned it out of the parking lot. She flipped the radio on. George Thorogood howled “Bad to the Bone.”
“Love that mother,” she announced over the music. “Time for a little Jimbo. Kick the glove compartment open, will you, Tree?”
He popped the lid and out dropped a half empty bottle of Jim Beam bourbon. She grabbed it out of his hands, propped it between her legs, and deftly twisted off the cap. “Join me.”
“I don’t know whether you are aware of this, Ferne. But you’re not supposed to drink while you drive.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, taking a deep swig. “Boy, they really are trying to take our rights and freedoms away, aren’t they? I mean what kind of country is it, a woman can’t have a drink?”
She took another swig.
2
The tops of Cape Coral bungalows whisked by on either side of the flat strip of Veterans Memorial Parkway as George Thorogood sang “Who Do You Love.”
Ferne settled back against the red leather, one hand on the wheel, an arm on the open window. Tree had convinced her to put “Jimbo” back in the glove compartment.
Slapping the flat of her big hand against the outside of the car in time to the music, Ferne made a left on SW Pine Island Road and then drove toward Pine Island.
A series of blue and green and yellow match boxes appeared along either side of the highway—the art galleries and restaurants of Matlacha, evidence of a more unconventional, therefore more interesting, Florida that somehow survived in a world of strip malls and fast food franchises.