Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide

by Michaela Thompson

  What she remembered best, better than she remembered anything else, was that treasure hunting was a business these days. It was carried on by well-financed consortiums with high-tech equipment and legions of experts. She had trouble squaring this with rusting cannonballs and a locked tackle box— she had just remembered the tackle box— in a bedroom in a derelict house.

  She looked out at the house. The dining room window had been open a crack. That would be how he got in and out— on the other side, where she wouldn’t see. She’d been easy to fool.

  The other question was the porcelain bottle. John James had given that bottle to Merriam in 1922. How did it connect with the broken pieces of porcelain in the enamel dishpan? John James Anders had not been a scuba diver, or any sort of diver. The bottle could have washed up in the storm, she supposed, although it seemed too fragile to have stayed in one piece.

  She wished she could stop thinking about Harry. The idea that he had used her so cynically didn’t square with what she thought she knew of him. Clearly, he still resented the way she had treated him years ago. Was he using the house to get back at her, somehow? He wasn’t like that. She didn’t think he was like that.

  In an effort to clear her mind, she tried to work on The Children from the Sea. The sketches she had done of Kimmie Dee were full of verve, but right now she couldn’t connect to them. She was sitting with her chin in her hands, staring at the beige Formica of the tabletop, when the telephone rang.

  It was Clem Davenant. “I got a call this afternoon, out of the blue. I may have a buyer for your property,” he said.

  “A buyer?” She could hear how vacant she sounded.

  “Remember you said you’d probably have to sell?”

  Sure, she’d said she’d have to sell. Of course she remembered. But that would be sometime in the future, not a mere day after she’d said it. “I didn’t know you thought selling was such a good idea.”

  “I don’t, particularly. Am I dreaming? I was sure you said—”

  “You’re right. I did say it. What’s the story?”

  There wasn’t much of a story so far. Clem had gotten a call from a developer in Bay City, strictly exploratory. Clem had put the man off until he could talk to Isabel. “I thought you might like to come here for dinner and discuss it.”

  “I can’t keep coming to your place for dinner. Eve is going to think I’m a terrible freeloader.”

  “Actually, Eve will be at choir practice.” While Isabel took this in, he went on. “I was going to bake a red snapper. It’s my specialty. I haven’t made one in a long time.”

  She could ask him about the underwater archaeology project. She was sick of the trailer and her thoughts. She accepted the invitation.

  When she arrived Clem, his face flushed from the kitchen heat, was wearing a red-checked apron over Bermuda shorts. He said, “I’ll get you a drink and put you on the porch for a few minutes, all right? Do you like garlic?”

  “I love garlic.” Within minutes, she was settled on the back porch with a gin and tonic, while he rattled around in the kitchen. The lawn under the moss-hung trees was dappled with the last rays of the sun. It was almost as if things were normal, instead of threatening, disturbing, and possibly dangerous.

  Soon, Clem joined her. As they sipped their drinks, the smell of garlic and Parmesan cheese began to fill the air. He chatted about the Bay City developer. The man wanted to build a subdivision of town houses. He had had his eye on the Anders property for a while. “He told me he had contacted Miss Merriam once and offered to buy it, but she didn’t even want to discuss it. When he heard she’d passed on, he didn’t waste any time getting back in touch.”

  “He certainly didn’t.” Isabel wondered whether her irritation was because of the developer’s indelicacy or her own ambivalence. She pictured rows of identical town houses, streets with names like Seashore Drive. What would the subdivision be called? Cape Estates? Sunny Shores? “If Merriam was so determined not to sell, it seems crummy to start doing deals before she’s been dead a week.”

  He looked surprised. “If I’d known you felt this way, I would have told him to back off.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m confused. I’m not sure what I want to do.”

  She gave his shoulder a conciliatory pat and was surprised when he caught her hand and squeezed her fingers briefly. He got up and said, “Better check on the snapper. It can get overdone if it’s in a minute too long.”

  The snapper was delicious. The developer wasn’t mentioned again, and Isabel couldn’t quite shake the idea that he had been no more than an excuse for the occasion. Clem talked freely, asked questions about her work and her life in New York, listened to her intently. As yet there had been no opportunity to bring up underwater archaeology. She noticed that he made excuses to touch her, brushing against her when he refilled her wineglass, ushering her into the living room for coffee with his hand on the small of her back.

  She sat on the sofa. He poured the coffee, handed her a cup, and took a chair nearby. He said, “I’m glad you were willing to come here tonight, Isabel.”

  “I’ve enjoyed it.”

  “This is the first time since Andrea left that I’ve wanted to be with somebody.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  Yet she was uncertain about Clem. She wasn’t sure anyone could overmatch the darkness that had him in its grip.

  He put his cup aside and moved to sit by her, taking her saucer out of her hand and putting it on a side table. When he kissed her, his ferocity was startling. He was very strong, his grip painful. His mouth ground against hers until she could hardly breathe. There was no tenderness here, no companionability, no mutuality— only his raw, desperate need.

  At last, she managed to pull her head away. “Don’t, Clem.”

  He wound his arms tightly around her, straining against her. His breath rushed, hoarse and ragged, next to her ear. He said, groaned, a word that might have been her name. She thought, Eve— choir practice— neighbors, and prepared herself to fight. “Stop it!” she gasped.

  He shivered, pulled back, and said, “Oh God. Oh no.” He let her go and sat forward, his face in his hands.

  Isabel cooled her lips with cold fingertips. Her face prickled. It had happened so fast. She could still taste her last swallow of coffee.

  “Sorry,” Clem said, his voice tight.

  Isabel was still too astonished to speak. All right, she had seen it coming, but— Clem Davenant? He was so proper, so buttoned-down.

  “Don’t walk out. Don’t leave,” he said. “Wait a while, all right? Eve will be back pretty soon.”

  Warily, Isabel began, “Clem, I can’t—”

  “Just stay, don’t walk out. Here. Your coffee’s still warm.” He handed it to her, the cup clattering against the saucer.

  She took it and drank. It was only lukewarm.

  He retrieved his own cup and returned to sit beside her. After a few minutes, he said, “I haven’t been functioning. As a man, I mean. For a while it didn’t matter, but now I’m getting— desperate.”

  “I understand.”

  “It doesn’t give me the right to prey on you.”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  He said, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to bend your ear about Edward again.”

  She had wanted to talk about Edward, hadn’t she? “I don’t mind.”

  “No. It’s time to stop imposing, on you and everybody.”

  “Actually, I was wondering about something. The underwater archaeology project you mentioned.”

  “The Esperanza? It was stupid.”

  “What was the Esperanza?”

  He grimaced. “The Spanish ship Edward and I were diving for. At least, it was the excuse.”

  Rusting cannonballs, square-headed nails, a pewter pitcher. “That was your project?”

  “Right. Come and look.” He seemed relieved to have something to talk about.

  She followed him down the hall to the room where, on her first vi
sit, she had found him looking at his shell collection. He flicked on the light. The shells were still there, delicate and beautiful in their glass case. A desk stood under the windows. The walls were lined with bookcases overflowing with books and documents. “I hate this stuff. I want to get rid of it all,” Clem said. “It’s just that I can’t. I try, and I can’t.”

  He opened a drawer, brought out a fat accordion file, and tossed it on the desk.

  Isabel picked up the file and glanced through it. Pages of calculations, notes, a rough map.

  “The search for the Esperanza,” said Clem with sarcastic solemnity. “The last great father-son adventure of Clem and Edward Davenant.”

  This was not a coincidence. There had to be a connection between Clem’s project and the artifacts she had found in the house. Isabel said, “The Esperanza was a Spanish ship?”

  Clem shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts and looked out at the night. “Yes, she was Spanish. The Esperanza was what they called a patache, an all-purpose packet boat. A patache wasn’t a prestige vessel— more of a scout or an escort to an armada. Some pataches did carry treasure, though. The Esperanza did. Edward and I looked into this, you see. Read up on it. That was part of my plan.”

  “Your plan?”

  “To get him interested in scuba diving. So he could get some healthy outdoor exercise. I thought: What could appeal to a twelve-year-old kid more than a treasure hunt?”

  Clem continued to look out into the darkness. “It was an excuse, that’s all,” he said. “If we’d been serious, we’d have had to follow a lot of regulations, get permits from the state. It was a fantasy.”

  “How did you learn about the Esperanza?”

  “The Esperanza is no secret. There are plenty of books about treasure hunting and Spanish wrecks. The Esperanza gets mentioned sometimes, along with a lot of other ships that are out there somewhere.”

  He turned to face her. “You know, Spain shipped gold and silver and other stuff over from the New World for several centuries. When a ship sank, the Spaniards hated to let it go. They put a lot of effort into salvaging it themselves, but that wasn’t always possible. A lot of treasure was left down there. You don’t hear much about treasure wrecks in these waters, but the ships used to leave Veracruz, in Mexico, and sail along the Gulf Coast to Havana, so it isn’t inconceivable. Or at least, that’s what Edward and I figured.”

  He took the file from her and shuffled through it with shaking fingers. “Edward got interested. He liked it. I didn’t force it on him. That’s what I have to remember.”

  “What happened to the Esperanza?”

  He put the file down. “The Esperanza left Veracruz as part of an armada in 1725, heading for Havana. They ran into bad weather and the other ships lost sight of her. She was never seen again. They kept close track of these things in Spain, and in the archives it was noted that her cargo included gold, silver, and Chinese porcelain. That’s most of what I know about the Esperanza. The rest is conjecture.”

  Chinese porcelain. Gold, silver. “What’s the conjecture?”

  “I challenged Edward to figure out whether the ship could have ended up near Cape St. Elmo. I mean, this was a project with everything— history, geography, meteorology, astronomy. You have to figure currents and weather, know latitude and longitude. I told him if he pinpointed some possible locations, we’d go diving and search for it. I told you he was smart. He ate it up. He was so caught up in the Esperanza project, we had to make a rule that he couldn’t start on it until after he’d done his homework.”

  “And did you—” Isabel cleared her throat. “Did you find it?”

  “Oh, hell no,” he said dismissively. “I don’t think either of us really expected to. Edward did a lot of calculations and figured out several general areas where he thought it could be. I mean, all of this is such a long shot. People don’t realize how big the ocean is, how hard it is to locate anything. We knew that. We weren’t serious.” His face grew more solemn. “Not really serious,” he repeated.

  “And you were searching one of Edward’s locations when—”

  “When he died, yeah,” he said. “We’d just started. There were some beams down there, loose lumber, and somehow he got pinned. He was panicking; his mouthpiece came out. I couldn’t get to him—” He closed his eyes for a moment, swallowing. “I got his weight belt unhooked and dragged him to the surface. I don’t know how I got him on the boat. He was limp. He was— he was dead, but I didn’t know. I radioed for help, tried to resuscitate him. Another boat came up soon, then several more, but it was too late.”

  The silence stretched out. Isabel said, “The people who came to help— were they people you knew?”

  He thought. “A couple were tourists. The first boat to get there was a scuba party coming in from diving nearby. A local captain, Harry Mercer.”

  So there it was. She said, “Harry Mercer. I used to know him.”

  “He tried to help. His deckhand made several dives to retrieve our equipment. But there was nothing anybody could do. Edward was gone.”

  Headlights shone through the window, and in a minute Isabel heard the front door open. Eve’s voice called, “Clem? I’m home.”

  “We’re back here.”

  Footsteps sounded in the hall. Eve stuck her head in the door. “Hello, Isabel. What are you doing in here, Clem?”

  “Just— talking.”

  “Talking?” She clasped her hands nervously. “Isabel, I hope he hasn’t been depressing you. It would be so much better if he’d—”

  Clem turned on her. “For God’s sake, Eve! Leave me alone!”

  Her face flushed. “Sorry.” She stepped back. “Excuse me.”

  As her footsteps receded, Isabel said, “I’d better go.”

  He gestured at the file. “I’m going to throw all of it away. That’ll make Eve happy.”

  He walked her to the door and she said good night. When she pulled out of the driveway, she could see him through the windows. He was back in the study, sitting at the desk, bending over the file.

  TWENTY-THREE

  At 7:15 a.m., when Harry walked out of his room, Scooter was already on the dock, leaning against a post and eating one of his yogurts with a plastic spoon. They were scheduled to take out a dive party. Harry had not mentioned to Scooter that he and Kathy were separated, and he could see by the set of Scooter’s body that Scooter was wondering why he was staying at the Beachcomber.

  Their party was nowhere in sight. Harry waved at Scooter and veered off toward the restaurant to get some coffee. He was a little hung over from spending the evening at the bar, and the sun on the water wasn’t helping his headache.

  Harry had moved out on Kathy. The thought was still strange to him. He was living in a room with twin beds, a braided rug that looked like the potholders his daughters used to make at camp, and a toilet that gurgled all night.

  But he was glad. It had been coming a long time; he saw that now. He got his coffee and, carrying it with him, walked along the dock toward the Miss Kathy and Scooter.

  The air was still and moist, full of the scent of the many fish that had been cleaned in the neighborhood. Scooter had gone back to his yogurt, and the sight of the spoonfuls of pink stuff going into Scooter’s mouth made Harry’s stomach more sour. He blotted his face with his napkin and hardened himself to face Scooter’s gaze, which made Harry feel he had to say something. He delayed for a minute by asking, “The boat gassed up?”

  Scooter nodded.

  “Everything on board?”

  Another nod.

  Harry waved in the direction of the room he was occupying. “I’ve moved out here for a while,” he said. He tried to make it sound like it didn’t much matter, and basically he thought he succeeded.

  Scooter had gotten still. “Yeah? Why?” he asked.

  “Well…” Harry took a swallow of scalding coffee and choked it down. “Kathy and I haven’t been getting along too good.”

  Scooter walked to th
e garbage can next to the bait tanks and dropped in his cup and spoon. When he returned, he braced himself against the post and started stretching out his hamstrings. His hair was skinned back in the ponytail he wore diving. His head lowered, Scooter said, “This is because of Isabel.”

  “Isabel? What? No, it isn’t.”

  The sinews in Scooter’s bare arms stood out as he gripped the post. “Don’t bullshit me, Harry.”

  Harry was getting a crick in his neck. He eased his head around, trying to work it out. “Answer me one thing,” he said.

  No response.

  “What the hell is it to you?”

  Scooter didn’t reply right away. His head still bent, he continued to press his heels down. Finally, he stood upright and looked at Harry. “She went into the house,” he said.

  A goose walked over Harry’s grave. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because somebody was in there. She was in there.”

  Scooter began doing deep knee bends. Why he didn’t barf that yogurt, Harry did not understand. “How do you know?”

  “I felt it.”

  “You felt it? Was anything moved? Was anything missing?”

  “No.”

  “Then what in the hell did you feel?”

  “I felt a presence.”

  Scooter moved smoothly, effortlessly, up and down. He could keep going for a long time, Harry knew, and still he wouldn’t be breathing hard. “It’s time to put a stop to it,” Scooter said.

  Harry shaded his eyes and looked toward the parking lot. “Where in the hell are those folks? We’re losing time.”

  Scooter’s tanned back moved up and down. “I don’t care what you’ve got going with her. It’s time.”

  Harry thought about Isabel going into the house. Goddamn. He wanted to punch something.

  A couple of minutes later, the people in the morning dive party came trailing up, full of excuses, and they were ready to leave at last.