“It was our mother’s dying wish that we find our sister Sara.”
♦
Consuelo came out the front door of the hotel and saw her big sister going into the house across the street. As smart as her sister was about so many things, Consuelo could never get over how little she seemed to know about men. She shook her head sadly and sighed.
“He’s gay Lyd…”
She might not be as smart as her sister, but Consuelo knew men. Though she’d never met the good-looking guy across the street, she intuitively knew he was gay. It wasn’t as useful as some of her sisters’ talents, but when you liked men as much as she did, it came in handy.
As she walked through Old Town, her thoughts drifted, as they sometimes did, to what it would be like going away on her own, maybe to the Orient. Plenty of cool martial arts things to get into over there. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave her sisters. No telling what would happen to the poor things without her around to protect them.
It was already getting hot, and the late summer humidity was making some of the tourists wandering Duval Street look a little wilted. No sense in bothering with the businesses there, Lydia would be giving the whole area a thorough canvassing in the next few hours.
Consuelo walked down Duval heading for the marina. The place was already getting jammed with walkers and gawkers, bikes and scooters, Taxis and trucks, and Conch Trains Trolleys and Conch Tour buses. Must have been an extra cruise ship or two in port; busy day for the off season.
The heat didn’t really bother Consuelo much. She’d already adapted to the new climate. Her body was not only an excellent example of the female form, it was also tough as a tree stump. She had amazing natural strength and endurance, and added to it with running, martial arts training, weights, and large quantities of food and drink. A large portion of the drink was beer, which she seemed to have an inordinate capacity for.
Her section of town started down by the shrimp boats. She started with a little place trying to look like a local’s hangout that offered a free draft beer with every bowl of seafood chowder. She scanned the room stuffed full of eyes and spotted a white-haired old guy sitting at the bar with a parrot on his head. Most of the eyes belonged to tourists, but the old guy looked local. He was barefoot, wearing guano-splattered fisherman’s clothes, a captain’s hat, and a big smile. Probably a regular at the annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest.
“Afternoon young lady! Pull up a stool here and meet Fish Daddy and Capt. Tom!”
The green parrot let loose a loud squawk and a whistle when he heard his name. This was obviously the beginning of a well-practiced bit by the old salt. Consuelo figured he probably got a lot of free beer and female companionship with the routine. For once she wasn’t into playing around, she had a lot of territory to cover. Fish Daddy took the picture and gave it a long look before saying anything.
“She in trouble, that why you’re looking for her?” The old guy was all business, his act forgotten.
“My sister. I don’t really know if she’s in trouble or not, but she might have been in Key West a few months ago. Have you seen her?” The old guy looked at the picture again, set it on the bar and rubbed his face with both hands before answering.
“Might have, but not like you think.” The parrot made a loud belching noise as Consuelo waved off the waitress. Fish Daddy took a long, thoughtful pull on his bottle of beer, then gave her a sideways look.
“I seen somebody look like that in my dreams before, maybe two, three times.” He waited a beat, obviously waiting to see how this played. Consuelo held his look. “Your sister a dreamer by any chance? She ever do any Lucid Dreaming? You know, the kind of dreams when you know you’re dreaming, and can control better than regular dreams?”
There was something here. She could tell the old man either had seen someone in his dreams who looked like Sara or at least believed he had.
“I know what Lucid Dreaming is, but I haven’t been in contact with my sister for years, so I don’t know if she’s a dreamer or not.” Lucid Dreaming was one of the things her teachers had told her about. As far as she knew though, none of her sisters were serious dreamers. Maybe the old guy was.
“Well, I ain’t saying the gal I seen in my dreams was your sister, but whoever she was, she seemed to be in a kinda bad way. Sick, or maybe feeling down, you know?”
“Did you talk to her, in your dreams?” This wasn’t what she had expected to come up with in the search, but she was determined to follow all leads, no matter how strange. Fish Daddy took another meditative slug of beer before answering.
“Not much, a little. Seems like she was looking for someone herself, fella named Charlie if I remember correctly.” Consuelo answered his raised eyebrow with a shrug. “Said she was going to ask the Indians about Charlie. I remember that part because she said the Calusa. Ain’t been no Calusa Indians for a couple hundred years or so. Made me think maybe she was some kinda lost soul from another time or something.”
Consuelo felt a chill run up her spine. She hadn’t ever considered her sister Sara might not be with the living anymore.
“Did she say anything else? Anything about where she might be?”
“No, ‘fraid not. Must be somewhere in south Florida though, that’s where the Calusa used to hang out.”
Consuelo killed the glass of beer before she realized she hadn’t ordered anything. She gave the old dreamer one of the Hotel’s cards and told him to give them a call if he had any more dreams about the woman who looked like Sara. She thanked him for the beer as she slid off the barstool.
“Any time, Missy! If you find your sister, tell her to stop by here sometime. I ain’t hard to find!”
♦
Josephine hung-out at the front desk of the hotel. Most of the hotel’s eighteen rooms were occupied, so somebody had to be at the desk all the time. They hoped to find someone to keep an eye on the place for a few hours once in a while. There was no way they would trust Jeremy to run the place, especially after the reports on his activities from her little Ben. The three sisters wanted to go out together, hit some hot-spots around town and get out on that beautiful water – plenty of new things to do.
As much as she loved her sisters, Josephine didn’t like them calling Ben an imaginary friend, like she was some kind of crazy person. Okay, so maybe she was a tiny bit crazy sometimes, but no doubt they were just jealous of Ben. She’d show them after she found a cure for the common hangover and got filthy rich. Then she’d take a trip with Ben, just the two of them off to some romantic hideaway. Leave her sisters behind. But what would they do without her? Probably be all sickly without someone to take care of them.
Thinking about getting rich, dreaming of romantic getaways with Ben, and worrying about helpless sisters made her hungry, so Josephine whipped up a quick fruit salad of oranges, pineapple, and mango. While eating, she checked out the map of Key West Lydia had worked on the night before. It was marked with the parts of town where each sister would be showing the picture of Sara.
Looked like she had the far end of Old Town, the treasure museum, a few houses, and some restaurants. Josephine wrinkled her nose when she saw how the shaded area on her map went down around the yogurt shop, but included the topless bar. She hated those places. Lydia probably did that on purpose, just to mess with her.
As the day wore on, Josephine checked in an anxious couple from Dayton on their honeymoon, and answered the phone. She hated the phone.
By late afternoon she was slumped over the front desk, absently stroking her favorite piece of cashmere. She gazed longingly out the window at the garden of flowering plants and trees, annuals, herbs, birds, and bugs. The side door opened.
“Hey Josephine! You seen that hammer with the red handle? It’s not in the garage.”
She rolled her eyes and slowly turned. She regarded the sweaty little purple-spotted handyman with a look of complete boredom.
“S-stone crabs. W-w-wait.”
She slipped the old piec
e of sweater into her pocket and went through the door behind the desk into the kitchen the sisters shared. They had used the hammer the night before for breaking open some crab claws. Stone crabs were the best. She grabbed the hammer and came back up front. Jeremy was looking over the map.
“What’s this? You got part of the island marked here for something?”
Josephine stopped a few feet from the desk and narrowed her eyes, holding the hammer menacingly. There was an idea coming. Jeremy lost his usual lecherous glare and took a step back.
“That’s the one! You can just give me the hammer now, and I’ll be going back to work! Got a lot to do!”
Jeremy was showing a lot of nervous smile. He was supposed to be repairing the wood fence in back, but Ben had reported seeing him trying to open a trunk one of the guests had stored in the garage.
Josephine made no move to give up the hammer. Jeremy was always talking about the topless bar, the Pink Snapper. He spent a lot of time there, and probably most of his money. Maybe he could go in there with a picture of Sara to show around. How bad could he screw that up?
Jeremy looked like he was about to abandon the hammer and flee, so Josephine stopped giving him the eye and smiled sweetly. She set the hammer on the desk and took one of the pictures of Sara out and laid it next to the hammer.
“L-look at th-this.”
Jeremy cautiously approached the far end of the desk. He picked up the picture and gave it a good look.
“T-take that to the S-snapper. A-a-ask if…”
“Hey, this looks kinda like Sara!”
♦
Gustov flipped a cigarette butt out the car window at some freak with a plastic orange cape.
“Definitely got your more loony types well represented in this town. Check the one in the cape with the mustache having a conversation with himself. Whole town’s supposed to be spaz cases and fags. Least that’s what the boss says.” He looked over at the smaller man sitting next to him in the driver’s seat.
Louie usually didn’t mind his partner’s bullshit, but it was getting on his nerves today. The rental car’s air-conditioning had crapped-out half way down from Miami. He was sweating like a pig already, and getting stuck behind some big smelly delivery truck on Duval Street wasn’t helping the heat rash he could feel cooking down between his legs. He wasn’t having one of his better days. He needed a shower, maybe two.
“There aren’t any more weirdos here than Miami, Gus. They just put up with ‘em here, think they’re cute or something. People come from all over the country to get sunburned and look at the freaks. They get ‘em all over at a place called Mallory Square every day and let ‘em act-up. Tourists come look at the sunset, give the freaks money. Real unsanitary situation.”
Louie brushed some imaginary dust off his white linen jacket and blew the car horn at the truck. While Gustov went for the fat and sloppy look, Louie favored the Miami Vice style. He had Don Johnson’s wardrobe right down to the Italian shoes and no socks. The fact that Johnson was a cop in the old TV series and he was a small-time hood, didn’t make much difference to Louie.
He’d been to Key West before, Gustolf hadn’t. Louie had been all over the country, Gustolf hadn’t been out of Miami in years. Louie had pulled a lot of scams, done some debt collections, worked a few people over pretty good even, but never done any real wet work. Gustolf had. So you had to give the man a certain amount of respect, even if he did have some rather unsanitary habits himself.
♦
Consuelo went to the marina office and showed some people the picture. Nothing. A guy fishing off the dock said he might have seen someone who looked like that, but he couldn’t be sure. She worked some of the bigger boats and houseboats that looked like they’d been there for a while. No luck. Time for a break.
There was a good-looking young guy scrubbing down a small sailboat. Gave her a look and a smile. Said he was sailing around by himself before starting law school. Nice guy. She could tell. Consuelo’s sharp blue eyes softened, they took on more the look of a big cat. He offered her some Gator-aid and she drank a quart without looking away. Sometimes, like now, she purred.
A half hour later she was using the shower in the little head of the sailboat. After getting back in her clothes she gave him a quick kiss and left him smiling in his bunk to work on the story he was no doubt going to tell his friends back at school about the blond in Key West.
Several of the bigger private boats were empty, but there was a guy sitting in the shade on an old houseboat at the end of the dock. The houseboat looked like someone had put a lot of work into it.
“Hi, I’ve got a picture here of someone I’m looking for. Mind if I come aboard so you can take a look?”
The man had been looking down, holding something in his hand. He looked up and tilted his hat back a little. “Sure, come on aboard young lady. Have a seat, take a load off. Get out of that hot sun for a bit.”
The guy was a weathered-looking old dude sporting a big goofy grin. Consuelo had a seat at his little table. There was some fishing tackle on the table, mostly hooks and line. He picked up a piece of heavy line about a foot long and handed it to her.
“I don’t suppose you could give me a hand here for just a sec could you? I got a little problem here, and another pair of hands would be a help.”
He opened his hand and there was a small gold hook stuck deep in the palm of his hand.
“I was just tying some bait hooks here and got myself hooked good swatting at a deerfly.”
He had Consuelo loop the line through the bend in the hook, and while he was pushing down on the shank, he told her to give it a quick yank. She was skeptical, but it popped out clean.
“Cool! Hey, can I try that?” Before the old guy could say anything, Consuelo had picked up one of the small hooks on the table and jammed it in her hand up past the barb. He stared, dumbfounded, at the scarred and calloused hand with the hook sticking out of it.
“Don’t that hurt a bit, Miss? I seen a lot of people get hooked, myself more often than I like to think about, but I never seen anyone do it on purpose.”
Consuelo shrugged and held out her hand. While she pushed down on the hook, the man put one end of the line through and gave it just a little pressure.
“Okay, here we go, miss, on three. One, two…” And he popped the hook out.
“Hey that’s some trick, mister!” Consuelo licked the little drop of blood off her hand, and stuck out the other for a handshake.
“Consuelo!”
“Name’s Hank, but most folks call me Slip. Glad to make your acquaintance there, young lady.”
He tried not to show it, but Consuelo saw the surprised look in his eyes from the handshake. She took out one of the pictures.
“This is a picture of my sister. We think she came to Key West a few months ago.” The old guy was giving the picture a good look. “Cool old houseboat you got here.”
The man looked up with the grin again. “That it is, but it’s not mine. Belongs to a fella name a Taco Bob. He’s off somewhere fishing. Man’s all the time off fishing.” He handed the picture back. “I’m sorry, Consuelo, but I ain’t seen her, least if I did I don’t remember. You might want to ask Taco Bob sometime. Man knows a lot a folks around here, and known to help ‘em out whenever he can.”
“Maybe I could leave one of these pictures with you, and you could show it to him?”
The old guy looked like he could take care of himself. Tough-looking customer if you looked past the goofy grins. She wasn’t sure what to make of this guy. Not an easy read, even for her.
“Hey, no problem, young lady. Be glad to help out.”
Consuelo left him a picture with the hotel’s phone number. She could tell he was watching her as she walked back up the dock.
♦
Jeremy’s life had had its ups and downs in his almost forty years. Not long ago he’d been broke with no job and no friends. Then fate sent him a fellow connoisseur of au naturel women at the toples
s bar – a regular who owned a hotel. The man liked Jeremy, especially when he was loaded, which he usually was, but lived in fear of his lovely but totally cold-hearted-bitch wife.
Jeremy talked his way into a job at the hotel. The handyman job came with a salary and a little room in back. Things were looking up.
The wife’s poodle soon changed everything by running out in the street in front of a speeding beer truck one night. The wife nearly made a daring rescue.
After the funeral, the widower found a buyer for the hotel. He was feeling the glow of champagne and being newly engaged to one of the dancers at the topless club when he decided to put in the contract that the handyman had six months to find suitable employment elsewhere.
The new owners of the hotel were three very fine-looking sisters from out west.
Shortly after Jeremy thought he recognized a picture, the youngest and hottest of the sisters had shown him, he woke up in her bedroom. The curtains were drawn and the room was lit with candles. The air was thick with strange incense. As he came fully awake, Jeremy noticed the decor of the room was like something out of an old Bella Lugosi movie, one of the really creepy ones. It was complete with a big four-poster bed, long dark curtains, some dusty cobwebs, and what appeared to be a fully stocked alchemist’s laboratory.
He first realized something wasn’t right when he couldn’t move his head. He seemed to be sitting in a high-back chair, with several hundred feet of telephone cable wrapped around him and the chair. The only things he could move were his eyes, fingers and toes. Looking down, the chair seemed to be sitting in a large metal wash tub. He tried to yell, but there were enough wraps of cable in his mouth that he couldn’t get out much more than a moan.
“Look who’s awake!”
The little blonde, Consuelo, came into the room. He had seen her kick the living shit out of a big obnoxious drunk outside the hotel one night. She was currently drinking out of a quart bottle of beer and giving him the same kind of cold smile he had seen on bar-bouncers just before they threw someone, often himself, out the front door.
Key Weird 03; Key Witch Page 3