Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide

by Michaela Thompson

  “I’m trying to trace someone who may be buried in your cemetery,” Isabel said. “Is there a list of names?”

  Hester Davis touched her hearing aid. “Trace what?”

  Isabel raised her voice. “The cemetery! Do you have a list of people buried there?”

  “Yes indeed,” Hester said. “The Reverend Willis has it in his office. He’s on vacation, but he’ll be back a week from Saturday, if you want to check with us then.”

  Summoning a smile, Isabel said, “I’m from out of town. Do you think you could let me look at it now?”

  The secretary shook her head adamantly. “I don’t go in his office when he’s not here. I can’t get called a snoop that way.” She looked as if it was a sore subject.

  “I really would so much appreciate it—”

  Hester shook her head again. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”

  Rows and rows of neat grave markers swam before Isabel’s eyes. Forget it. She turned away.

  She had taken a couple of steps toward the door when Hester said, “What name were you looking for?”

  Isabel turned back. “Addison.”

  Hester’s eyes widened. “Addison! Why didn’t you say so?”

  Had she finally hit pay dirt? “You mean you have an Addison buried out there?”

  Mention of the name Addison had transformed Hester. “Goodness yes. Father of one of our church elders. I remember the old man so well, coming in for services with his wife. A fine old gentleman, so mannerly and polite.” Her beaming face clouded. “The son’s not well at all, I’m afraid. Did you say you’re kinfolk of his?”

  This was no time to get mired in tortured explanations. Isabel opted for a plain and simple lie. “I think I might be.”

  “Oh, he would be pleased. If you want, while you go have a look at the old man’s grave, I’ll phone the son and tell him you’re in the neighborhood. It would do him a world of good to talk to you.” She waved Isabel out. “Go on and look. The family plot is in the third row from the church building, next to the far end. You’ll find it.”

  Isabel could hardly believe this abrupt reversal of fortune. Stammering her appreciation, she left the office while Hester was picking up the telephone.

  Out in the manicured cemetery, she counted the rows of headstones, walked to the far end, and began searching. There were no Addisons. She began to suspect that Hester was simply loony. She continued to look.

  After another few minutes, she saw the explanation. There were two headstones directly in front of her, surrounded by clean white pebbles and stone coping. Mother and Father. The Father stone was inscribed:

  Addison Bainbridge

  1880-1960

  Beloved Husband and Father

  Gone to Eternal Rest

  Hester had sent her to someone whose first, not last, name was Addison. Isabel had tracked down the wrong man.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Isabel sprinted back to the church office, but it was too late. Hester greeted her with the news that the son of Addison Bainbridge had been delighted to hear of a visiting relation. He insisted that Isabel come right over. Hester obviously felt she had done something admirable. “I told you he hasn’t been well,” the secretary said, dropping her voice. “They say it’s… serious. This will make him so happy.”

  Isabel didn’t have the heart to tell her about the misunderstanding. She noted the directions to the Bainbridge farm, which according to Hester was only a few minutes’ drive away. “He’s expecting you!” Hester caroled as Isabel said good-bye.

  Isabel would have to stop by and see Mr. Bainbridge, explain the mistake. What an embarrassment to have raised a sick man’s hopes for a visit with a relative. As soon as she had straightened things out with him, she would be on her way.

  Following Hester’s directions, she took a left at the bottom of the hill. After a couple of miles, she saw the house— white frame, tree-shaded, substantial, with several outbuildings behind it. Coming up the long driveway, Isabel passed banks of camellias and azaleas, stands of fruit trees and dogwoods. Everything about the place bespoke graciousness and prosperity. A far cry from the world of River Pete, living in a driftwood shack and doing chores for the Purseys in exchange for tobacco.

  She parked at the steps. As if he had been watching for her, a man in his sixties came out on the porch. He had sparse salt-and-pepper curls and dark eyes sunk in a face with an unhealthy gray pallor. He wore a crisp white shirt, a tie knotted at the neck. An aroma of after-shave made Isabel wonder whether he had dressed after he got Hester’s phone call.

  “I’m Addison Bainbridge,” the man said. He had a deep voice, an appealing smile. “Are you my long-lost cousin?”

  Isabel flushed. “Actually, I doubt it,” she said. “In fact, I think there’s been a mix-up.”

  Addison Bainbridge was not daunted. “Oh, we’ll find a connection somewhere. I got out the albums. Come on in.”

  It wouldn’t hurt her to spend half an hour with this courtly gentleman. She followed him into a parlor with chintz-covered furniture. Several ancient-looking photo albums were piled on a coffee table. “Where are you from?” Bainbridge asked.

  “I grew up on Cape St. Elmo.”

  “St. Elmo.” He waved an invitation to sit down. “None of our kinfolks are from that area. Not that I know of. What’s your family name again?”

  “Anders. My grandfather was John James Anders, and my grandmother was Polly Sheffield.”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

  Isabel tried again. “I’m sure the secretary at the church misunderstood somehow, and—”

  He settled himself beside her and picked up an album. “Don’t be hasty. The albums may tell us something, don’t you think?”

  She could see that he was set on looking at the albums and not particularly curious about who she was. She could spare the time to look at one of them before she left.

  “Here’s my father.” Bainbridge pointed to a studio portrait of a formidable-looking man with a mane of gray hair and a luxuriant beard. Addison Bainbridge, Sr., was dressed in a well-fitting suit, his hands folded, staring unsmiling into the camera.

  “He’s very striking,” Isabel said.

  “Oh, he was something. What a life he had,” said Bainbridge. “Came to Gilead Springs with nothing but some poker winnings, bought land—” Bainbridge made a sweeping gesture to indicate the house and its surroundings, fruits of his father’s labor and ingenuity.

  Keeping the conversation going, Isabel asked, “When did he come to Gilead Springs?”

  “He came here… oh, sometime in the late twenties. Look. Here’s one with me.”

  The photo was of his father, looking no less stiff, standing next to a slight, pretty woman with a prim smile. The woman was holding a chubby baby in a lace bonnet. “That’s my mother,” Bainbridge said. “She was twenty-five years younger, but he outlived her. He was nearly fifty when I was born. And, oh, gracious, look at this—”

  Nodding, murmuring politely, Isabel studied the Bainbridge sisters and brothers, ponies, dogs, birthdays, vacations, graduations. She was comfortable, and it seemed fine with Bainbridge if her participation was minimal. Possible connections between the families had been dropped as a topic for speculation. When the first album closed, the next one opened.

  Sometime later, the last page was turned in the last album. Isabel had done her duty. She said how interesting it had been and that she’d better go.

  “I have enjoyed this tremendously,” Bainbridge said, and she was sure he meant it. There was a pink glow on his ashen cheeks.

  “So have I.” Isabel stood and offered her hand.

  He took it. “I’m sorry we didn’t turn up any relationship between our families. It doesn’t seem likely they even knew each other. You’re from the coast, and my father didn’t like the ocean at all. Wouldn’t go near the water and hated the taste and smell of fish.”

  Isabel smiled. “We’ll declare ourselves honorary cousins.�
��

  He chuckled. “Let’s do that. It’s been lovely for me, reliving these memories.”

  They began a slow stroll toward the door. Bainbridge said, “You know, it’s fashionable to criticize your father, isn’t it, but I’ve always admired mine. He had a checkered career before he settled down. He was a gambler, spent time in Cuba, was pretty much a wastrel until he married my mother and joined the church. Once he did that, he never gambled again, and he swore he’d whip any of us if we ever started.”

  At the word wastrel, Isabel’s ears had pricked up. She said, “He came to Gilead Springs from Cuba?”

  “So I understand. He was always vague about those early days. I think he was ashamed of the way he’d lived. He said a good friend of his died of scarlet fever and that made him decide to change his life.”

  They were in the hall. “Let me show you something,” Bainbridge said. He disappeared through a door, emerging a few minutes later with a small box of polished wood. He unfastened the catch and opened it.

  The interior of the box was fitted with dark blue velvet. Lying in a round depression was a gold coin. Its edges were uneven, its worn surface carved with symbols Isabel couldn’t decipher. Despite its crude look, the gold piece had an eerie beauty.

  Chills rippled over Isabel’s skin. She was sure— she knew— she was looking at a coin from the Esperanza.

  Bainbridge caressed the coin with his forefinger. “My father told me he won several of these in a poker game in Cuba,” he said. “Spanish coins, probably pulled out of a shipwreck down there. When he came to Gilead Springs, he had four of them. He sold three to get himself started. He kept this one— for luck, and to remind him of his vow never to gamble. He had this case made up for it. See, here he is in Cuba.”

  A photograph was mounted in the lid of the box. It showed two men on a porch whose wrought-iron railings were nearly obscured by a flowering vine. The bearded one with his arms crossed was Addison Bainbridge. Beside Bainbridge, his face half-shadowed by a straw hat, stood John James Anders.

  Isabel could not speak. Staring at John James, and it was certainly John James, she sent a silent message: So that’s what happened to you. You took off for Cuba, you bastard.

  Addison Bainbridge was saying, “My father made me promise never to get rid of this coin. It’s in his will that I can’t sell it. He was superstitious about it.”

  He took the box from her. The lid closed, John James vanished from view, and they were standing on the front porch saying good-bye.

  Bainbridge said, “This has been a tonic for me. My wife died last year, and my children don’t live close by. I haven’t been well.”

  “I’m so sorry. I hope you’ll—”

  He shook his head. “No. I won’t get better. But I’ll hope to see you again, if you’re in the neighborhood.”

  Isabel said good-bye to River Pete’s son and started back to Cape St. Elmo.

  It was almost laughable. A few times on the way home, Isabel felt her lips pulling into a bitter smile.

  What had happened to the sainted John James now seemed fairly clear. He and Pete had, as she guessed, dug up gold coins from the Esperanza. Who had had the idea to go to Cuba? Pete, the footloose gambler? Or John James, the debt-ridden visionary? It was easy to imagine how they had reinforced one another.

  They had found buried treasure. A person’s life has to change when such a thing happens. A man doesn’t go on as he has before, struggling to support a wife and children in a mockery of a house, or living on the beach and doing odd jobs. They had loaded the gold on John James’s boat— no point in waiting, having word of it get around, especially to John James’s creditors— and off they had gone.

  John James had seen fit to share his windfall by giving Merriam what was probably the least of it, the blue-and-white porcelain bottle.

  And a letter. The lost letter. What had he said to excuse his defection?

  A good friend of his died of scarlet fever and that made him decide to change his life. There was no way to prove it, but Isabel had to believe River Pete’s dead friend had been John James Anders.

  If she was right, John James had died in Cuba. River Pete Addison had come back to Florida with the last of his gold and recreated himself as Addison Bainbridge. He sold three of his remaining four gold pieces, married, joined the Primitive Baptist Church, paid his twenty-dollar debt to the Purseys. And never, ever, ate fish again.

  As she got closer to Cape St. Elmo, the cottonmouth moccasin began to intrude on Isabel’s thoughts. Her palms started to sweat as she saw again the flat spade-shaped head, the greenish brown form twisting along the floor of the kitchen. It couldn’t come back, but what if it did?

  Maybe she should try drawing the moccasin. She thought she could do it. She had a perfect, more than vivid, mental picture of how it had looked and moved. She would try, see if she could objectify the snake, put it out there on paper instead of letting it terrorize her imagination.

  Absorbed, she planned how she would render the snake, perhaps in conjunction with other local plants and animals— sandspurs and dollar weeds, grasshoppers and yellow jackets, jellyfish and pelicans. It would be a nightmare version of the illuminated manuscript effect she had worked on so hard for The Children from the Sea. Instead of pretty fruits and flowers, she could do a grotesque border that intruded into the picture, threatened to take it over and smother it, like kudzu vines.

  She drove another mile or two, chewing at the idea.

  It might even work for her book. Instead of her medieval never-never land, have Marin and Marinette, the heroic twins, shipwrecked on Cape St. Elmo, threatened with its dangers. Instead of a stone castle, there was an old house in the midst of the weeds. Instead of classically pretty, lifeless figures for the heroes, there was—

  There was Kimmie Dee Burke. Kimmie Dee wasn’t the model for the evil foster sister, but for the courageous Marin and Marinette.

  Isabel couldn’t wait to get to her sketchbook. At least she had that, her constant escape hatch. At least she could pick up her pencil and draw.

  She drove up to the trailer under the lengthening shadows. Her mind full of her project, she dashed inside.

  The blow came from nowhere. It caused a flash in her eyes, like staring at the sun. She had only enough time to think she shouldn’t do that. She would go blind.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Buddy Burke sat huddled under the half-caved-in roof of a shanty, waiting for night to fall. Although it was a hot evening, he was shaking like a bastard.

  He was worried about the old engineer, the one he’d left tied up at the landing. Buddy was scared maybe the engineer had died.

  He had gotten so worried about it, he had scuttled the boat. Doing it hadn’t been easy, and Buddy was wet through.

  The old man wouldn’t have died. He was only tied up.

  And gagged. What if he puked and choked to death? What if he had a heart attack?

  Buddy pulled his legs in closer to his body.

  Fears about the engineer had spoiled Buddy’s homecoming mood as he rode along Deep Creek and out into the river. By the time he had pulled up under some bushes to sleep, he had been really spooked. He had lingered in his hiding place through this morning, paralyzed, afraid to move, until he said to himself, Just get going. He had gotten going and made it to the canal before fear overtook him again.

  That was when he had scuttled the boat. If they found him in that boat, they’d know he had killed the engineer, if the engineer was dead. He had tossed his shotgun out on the bank and knocked a hole in the wood bottom of the boat with the propeller shaft of the motor. He had damn near drowned himself doing it and could still taste brackish water in the back of his throat. The shotgun had gotten wet, too, and he wasn’t even sure it would fire.

  He was pretty close to home. He had tromped through these woods, his home woods, and taken shelter in the tumbledown shanty. Buddy had only the shotgun and the clothes on his back. No food. No money. He was maybe half an hour’s fa
st walk from the coast and his house.

  He had come this far. That could not be denied. He had come this far.

  Buddy had made an important decision: He would not go anywhere until dark. He wouldn’t wander around in daylight begging them to catch him. In the dark, he could move. He knew the route home.

  Yes, he was hungry and beaten-down. But he had come this far.

  Keyed up as he was, Buddy managed to sleep a while, slumped against the weathered boards. When his own snoring woke him, the night was as dark as the inside of a dog.

  Buddy blundered to his feet and nearly fell down again because one foot had gone to sleep. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He couldn’t see his gun. He couldn’t see jack.

  On his hands and knees, he felt around until he found the gun. He got up and struck out through the woods. He had no plan. His mind told him only, You came this far. Now go on.

  The trip took at least an hour. Buddy could be sure he was going right only if he didn’t let himself think about it. The minute he started to question the route, he was paralyzed. After a while, he came to some houses along the banks of the canal. Soon after that, he reached the culvert where the canal passed under Beach Road and then went by the Beachcomber.

  Buddy had no watch. He didn’t know what time it was, but he figured ten or eleven. He didn’t want to risk crossing the road, so he climbed down into the culvert. He stood there catching his breath in the barrel-vaulted space.

  It was not nearly as dark as before, because of the Beachcomber and the cottages. Light reflected off the water and rippled across the top of the culvert. Clutching his shotgun, Buddy inched through. On the other side, he crouched by a stand of cattails. When an inner signal told him to go, he climbed up the bank, crossed an expanse of weedy ground and plunged forward into the dunes. Sand coated his wet boots and crusted the legs of his jeans.