But these weren’t the reasons he wanted her to leave. At least she didn’t think so. More likely, this was a simple case of a man who didn’t want to get involved. It was screamingly obvious that he hated everything that kept him out of the water, even this store that paid his bills.
Thad had told her what he knew about Captain Eubank, and he didn’t owe her any more of his time. His body language said that he wasn’t going to give it to her.
Faye instinctively took a single step away from this heavily muscled man who clearly wanted her gone. He responded with a single step of his own, crowding her in the direction of the door.
He really didn’t want to talk about the captain.
“Thanks for talking to me about my friend,” she said, taking another step back and watching him crowd her toward the door by taking a bigger step forward. “I’ve got a car full of supplies that I need to get to some hungry and thirsty people, so I’d best be on my way.”
He did nothing to stop her from going, nor to give her a warm and fuzzy feeling that might make her want to return with money to spend. He didn’t even say “Have a nice day.” He just went back to organizing his stock.
As she walked to her car, she couldn’t stop thinking about something she herself had said. Sometimes she didn’t know what she thought until she heard herself say it out loud.
While she was saying to Thad that the captain must have been a confident diver because he was willing to dive by himself, the words had jangled her nerves a bit. Now that she had a moment to think about those words, it wasn’t hard to figure out why they had jangled. She was presuming that the captain had been alone because nobody had reported an accident. But what if he hadn’t been alone?
She considered that question, turning it over and over in her head as she sat in the parking lot of Thad’s store, too dispirited to drive the car full of supplies to the people who were waiting for her. She could think of no innocent scenario that involved the captain having a companion when he went out on the Gulf. Yeah, maybe a friend in another boat had been there when he entered the water and then left before he surfaced, but that seemed far-fetched and, frankly, irresponsible.
There were really only two realistic options. Either the captain had been alone on his last dive, or he hadn’t been alone and his companion had died with him. This scenario left his boat out there somewhere, and there might well be another corpse floating alongside it.
No. There was still another option. A second person might have gone out on the water with the captain and failed to call for help when he didn’t reappear from his dive.
That would have been impossibly irresponsible. Unforgivable. Illegal. And deeply disturbing.
Chapter Fourteen
After ten minutes of sitting immobilized in the car, Faye was finally able to make herself drive out of the parking lot. During all that time, Thad had never walked out to ask what in the heck she was doing.
She’d spent those ten minutes watching cars pass by on a street that she’d driven too many times to count. The traffic was steady, which was weird because she’d never seen enough vehicles on this street at any one time to even merit the word “traffic.” This was just another way that the hurricane had knocked down her world and built a new one that she didn’t like.
The little town was full of strangers wandering around in cars—insurance adjusters, FEMA personnel, roofers, volunteers, tree removal companies, contractors. She knew that some were there to help, and some were there to make a buck, and some were there to cheat people whose lives were in ruins. Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell them apart.
She wanted everybody to go away. She wanted to be safe at home with her husband and children, confident that none of them would ever leave her. She wanted the trees to stand back up, and she wanted the beaches to clean themselves of dead and dying things. She wanted to go back to a time when she’d never seen her friend’s body, wrapped in unfamiliar driving gear and floating dead in the water.
As she drove past Captain Eubank’s house, she noticed a car in the driveway. Thinking that his invalid sister, Jeanine, had gotten somebody to drive her into town to begin the sad task of cleaning out the house, Faye pulled in behind the gray SUV. She got a lump in her throat just walking around the side yard to the captain’s kitchen door, as she’d done so many times, but she didn’t want to miss the chance to tell his sister how sorry she was. It had been a while since she’d seen Jeanine, but Faye would know her anywhere. Her gray hair and slim form looked like her brother in drag. Spending a few minutes with somebody who reminded her so much of her friend seemed like a comforting thing to do.
As it turned out, the woman wandering in the captain’s back yard was emphatically not Jeanine Eubank. This woman was stick-thin and forty-ish. Her jaw-length, platinum blond hair was stick-straight and meticulously flipped under all the way round. Not a single hair escaped her perfect pageboy cut. Faye recognized this woman and her hair. Greta Haines had always made her uneasy in ways that she could not explain.
Faye didn’t know Greta well, but she knew that the woman was an insurance adjuster. Faye had seen her recently when she stopped by Emma’s house to talk about her homeowner’s insurance claim. It had been an unpleasant encounter, because Faye had instinctively doubted every word out of the woman’s mouth. Even the way she introduced herself and handed over a business card had felt slimy and underhanded.
There was no nice way to say it. If Greta was the person deciding how much Emma’s insurance company was going to pay her to rebuild her life, Faye had serious doubts about how fair the decision would be. Was the captain’s homeowner’s insurance also with Greta’s company? What about Jeanine? The captain had said her house was badly damaged, so she could be just as dependent as Emma was on a check from that company. More so, since Emma was a wealthy woman and Jeanine was not.
Faye was self-aware enough to know that she wasn’t being completely fair to Greta. She had her own deep prejudices against insurance companies and their adjusters, based on sad life experience. Anyone who had lived through a natural disaster had hair-raising stories to tell about insurance companies wiggling out of claims that any reasonable person would agree that they owed.
She knew that it wasn’t fair to judge Greta solely on what she did for a living. Insurance companies served a purpose or they wouldn’t exist. Nevertheless, being fair didn’t mean that she had to be okay with Greta wandering around a dead man’s back yard without permission. She gave the woman a “What are you doing here?” look and waited to see what she had to say for herself.
“Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth,” Greta said, extending a hand, “it’s so good to see you again.”
So she remembered Faye’s name. This was probably because she had cut her visit to Emma’s house short because she hadn’t been able to make a move without Faye or Joe giving her a baleful look. Skimping on Emma’s reimbursement was no way to treat an elderly widow, but Faye and Joe didn’t know how to make sure nobody did it. They’d settled for following Greta around like hunting dogs on the trail of a squirrel. This, at least, was within their power.
Faye skipped echoing Greta’s “So good to see you,” and got straight to the point. “Who called you? Maybe you haven’t heard, but the captain has passed away. Besides, I was here two days ago and the house was fine. The yard, too. Who’s making a claim?”
“His sister, Jeanine, is a dear friend, but she lives more than hour away and she’s too ill to come look at the house. I know she’ll want to sell it, so I wanted to help out by making sure it was in good shape to sell. I’m not so sure you’re right that there’s no damage, though. Some of the siding around on the other side looks iffy to me.”
Faye thought of how lovingly the captain had cared for this house. She hadn’t even started trying to imagine somebody else living in it. They wouldn’t understand that the heart of the captain’s house was his library. How many years and dollar
s had he poured into those books and documents? His sister would probably just pay someone to empty it. They’d sell what was salable and send the rest of his collection to the dump. The thought made Faye queasy.
A deep voice boomed from around the corner of the house. “Do you think we should—”
Greta interrupted to say, “Come over here and meet Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth.”
A lean figure in loose khaki work pants and a gray T-shirt strode around the corner, extending a hand. Short chestnut hair, heavily streaked with gray, framed a darkly tanned face and a pair of bright blue eyes.
“I’m Cyndee Stamp,” she said, shaking Faye’s hand. According to her T-shirt, she worked for Stamp Tree Service. Cindy confirmed this by saying, “My business is trees. Greta here thought I oughta check these out.” She waved a hand at the pines and oaks surrounding the captain’s house in the back and on the far side.
Faye eyeballed the trees. She didn’t see any twigs or branches on the ground. The trees weren’t leaning and they hadn’t been toppled. “They’re looking pretty good, right?”
“Well, actually,” Cyndee began, but Greta interrupted her again to say, “We’re still checking things out.” Then she stopped talking and stood there, just like Thad had, and waited for Faye to walk away.
Faye didn’t have a lot to say to Greta, but she wasn’t in the mood to give the woman what she wanted, either. Silently standing her ground on the captain’s neatly mowed and perfectly edged back yard, Faye knew that the grass would be shaggy within days without him there to care for it. She watched Greta move away from her to tap on white-painted siding that seemed perfectly fine to Faye. There was no rot in that wood, but there would be. Rot would come soon, unless someone else took on the job of pressure washing and painting the siding. Wood doesn’t last forever, no more than people do.
Cyndee hadn’t gotten the memo that they were giving Faye the silent treatment, so she got right down to business. “Lotta people got trees and branches down in their yards since the hurricane. You got anything you need me and my crew to take care of? Or maybe some of your friends’ve got tree work that needs doing?”
Faye shook her head. “You can’t really use the word ‘yard’ when you talk about my house. I live on an island, and we’ve let most of the property stay natural.”
“That’s what I do,” Cyndee said. “I’ve got forty acres that I’m trying to put back the way God made it. I burn it—keeps the brush down, y’know—and I can’t tell ya how many longleaf pine seedlings I put in the ground over the last ten years. It’ll take a lot more years than that to bring back a chunk of old Florida, but I can wait.”
Faye immediately felt warmer toward Cyndee, which was dumb. Joe had once told her that she’d like an ax-murderer who hugged trees as hard as she did.
“We definitely have a lot of trees down on Joyeuse Island, but they’re not hurting anything where they are. Joe will chop some of them up as we need firewood. We’ll just let the rest of them lie. They make good wildlife habitat.”
Cyndee looked her up and down for a second before saying, “Snakes is wildlife. You tryin’ to make a good home for them?”
So Cyndee thought Faye looked too citified to put up with a few more snakes here and there? Well, she could think again.
“God gave us snakes to take care of mice,” Faye said, giving Cyndee an appraising glance of her own.
“Well, now, so He did.” Cyndee cracked a smile. “If the storm broke off any trees and left the trunks standing up, you can let ’em stay there. If they’re in a place where it won’t hurt nothing when they do come down, that is. Woodpeckers love snags like that. And if the tree’s hollow, some owls might nest in there. They’ll help you with them mice. Owls eat snakes, too, if they get outta hand.”
Faye figured that she’d passed Cyndee’s “Are you too prissy for snakes?” test. She went back to standing silent, waiting for Greta to make a move. Would she leave or would she stand her ground until Faye left?
Faye waited, fighting the urge to grin like the possums who would soon be moving into the hollow snags left by the hurricane. She was a patient woman, and her patience was rewarded when Greta finally said, “We’ve got some other houses to check on, Cyndee. I have lots of clients, and they have lots of trees on their roofs. Let’s go.”
Faye waved goodbye and watched Greta settle herself behind the wheel of her SUV, smoothing the hem of her tunic under her as she sat. Cyndee lifted herself into the passenger door and dropped into the seat in a single fluid motion. Faye could imagine Greta’s slender foot in its elegant flat pump resting on the brake as the car door swung shut. It must be a heavy foot, since the engine revved loudly. Greta gave it enough gas to make it roar as she drove swiftly out of the driveway.
Greta and her revving engine were letting Faye know that she was perturbed by her interference. Faye did not care. She was glad to see the woman go. She didn’t trust Greta around Jeanine’s property without supervision.
After the insurance adjuster and her friend—or maybe “business associate” was a better description of what Cyndee was to Greta?—had disappeared around the corner, Faye drove away from Greta and from the other insurance adjusters clogging up Crawfordville’s traffic. She fled a town filled with roaming roofers and tree removal contractors, hungry for work.
Mostly, she was running away from people hoping to make a buck off other people who had lost everything. The food and water in her back seat was completely inadequate to fill the needs of people whose lives had been blown away, but it was what she had to give. She pressed the accelerator a little bit harder and got the hell out of town.
She didn’t notice the man leaning against a tree across the street from the captain’s house with his phone to his ear. He was dressed in a bright red golf shirt and khakis, like the late middle-aged man that he was, but people who were aware of such things would have known that these were extraordinarily expensive middle-aged men’s clothes. Just as Faye passed him, he held the phone out in front of him and snapped a series of photos of both Faye’s and Greta’s cars, taking care to capture their license plates.
Then he hurried across the street and did the very same thing that Greta had, the same thing that had enraged Faye. He trespassed on the property of a dead man.
Moving quickly, he slipped into the captain’s back yard, giving the house and trees a good hard look. But instead of tapping on the siding, like Greta, or testing the strength of tree limbs, like Cyndee, he kept his distance. He spent a few minutes snapping photos of the house, the trees, and the yard, and then he was gone.
Within moments, yet another person stepped onto the captain’s close-cropped grass. The young woman pushed her long auburn hair out of her eyes as she cast a longing look at the broad window that lit the captain’s living room, moving instead to the side of the house where she could stand, partially hidden, outside a second, smaller window that opened into that same room. For a long moment, she did nothing but stand there looking at the books inside. Then, she shook herself a little and slipped her phone out of her back pocket.
Working quickly, she methodically snapped photos of every bookshelf that could be seen from her vantage point. In less than a minute, the phone was back in her jeans pocket, and she had faded into the shadows cast by the captain’s azalea bushes. A few heartbeats later, she was back on the sidewalk, moving swiftly away.
Chapter Fifteen
Joe had hurried back to the marina to meet Lieutenant Baker, but their meeting time was hours in his rearview mirror, and she still hadn’t showed. He’d gotten a text from her half an hour after she was due, saying that she should be there soon. And then he’d gotten another text and another, delaying their meeting again and again. He wished she’d just admitted that she didn’t have time to fly Ossie with him, looking for the captain’s boat. His family had been through hell that morning, and he’d rather be home with his kids than twiddling his
thumbs while he waited for her.
He’d spent a little time with the kids on the beach when he got them home because Joe was convinced that there was no better cure for grief than the wind and waves. He’d have kept them out there longer, if he’d known the lieutenant would be this late. Instead, he’d hurried them indoors, bathed the sand off Michael, given Amande a goodbye hug, and taken Ossie back to the marina to wait for Lieutenant Baker. And wait. And wait.
He’d done his time-killing on social media. Everybody in Micco and Wakulla Counties now knew where he was, so it was no surprise to see Nate Peterson drop onto the bar stool next to him. Nate’s dad, Ray, a local big shot who owned the newspaper and a whole lot more, sat down on Nate’s other side.
“I saw your posts about being stuck at Manny’s with nobody to talk to,” Nate said. “Here I am, at your service. And Dad, too, of course.”
Joe shook hands with both men and said, “Have the cherry pie. I’m about to order my third slice.”
The Peterson men took his advice. Ray didn’t have much to say, but Nate got busy quizzing Joe about where the fish were biting. This was Joe’s favorite subject, except maybe Ossie. When he’d run out of fishing news, he started filling Nate’s ears about his new favorite toy.
“There’s a filter I want that’ll make my pictures do a better job of showing how clear the water is in the shallows,” he said.
“Buy it!” Nate said. “Get me some more pictures that meet my old man’s standards for the front page.”
Ray was looking at his phone while the two younger men talked, but Joe saw him cut his eyes in Nate’s direction. He laid the phone down on the bar, took a bite of cherry pie, and said, “Maybe I should just hire Joe to take all my pictures.”
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