He turned in at the hospital. “Maybe.”
Merriam was dressed, sitting in a chair beside her bed. Although her eyes widened when Isabel walked in, she didn’t respond to Isabel’s remarks. It took a few minutes to pack her suitcase and go through the formalities of checking out, and then the two of them walked slowly down the hall to the front door, where Clem was waiting with the car. As he stowed Merriam’s suitcase in the trunk, Isabel decided to risk conversation again. “I’m Isabel, Merriam. Remember me?”
No answer.
“We’re taking you to a sort of— nice place where there’s somebody to look after you.”
Clem came up the steps with an open umbrella. “Okay, Miss Merriam, let’s go for a ride.”
Merriam’s grip on Isabel’s arm tightened. “Isabel,” she said.
Isabel’s breath caught. “Yes, it’s me.”
Merriam’s fingers dug in. “Isabel. Isabel.”
During the short drive to Bernice Chatham’s, she did not speak again.
Bernice Chatham’s house was in an older neighborhood where spreading oak trees dwarfed the modest homes beneath. When they pulled up in front of the small bungalow, Bernice appeared on the screen porch. “Well, looky here,” she called. “Have you come to see me, Miss Merriam?”
Bernice was a fleshy woman in her sixties, with gray hair and the wispy shadow of a mustache on her upper lip. She showed them to a bedroom with windows opening on a verdant backyard. “Here’s your room, sugar!” she said to Merriam.
Merriam clutched Isabel’s arm. “Isabel.”
“Yes, that’s Isabel. It sure is.”
“Isabel. Isabel.”
“Now, do you need to go to the bathroom?”
As Merriam allowed Bernice to lead her away, Isabel looked over the room. Modest furniture of pale wood, three big windows, a ceiling fan. It seemed comfortable enough, but still there was something fundamentally terrible about this occasion.
When it was time for Isabel and Clem to leave, Merriam, seeming dazed, did not make a scene. Bernice saw them on their way with a cheery “Don’t you all worry about anything! We’ll be fine!”
Back in the car, Isabel leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.
“So that’s that,” said Clem. He sounded as wiped out as she felt. “It’s hard,” he went on. “You’re doing the best you can.”
Isabel opened her eyes. He actually seemed to be talking to her. “Merriam and I weren’t exactly best friends. I keep asking myself why I’m here.”
“Have you come up with an answer?”
“I have excuses but no answers.”
“Excuses are worthless. They look solid, but they crumble and then you’re left without anything to hold on to.” He started the car.
As they drove through the drenched streets, Isabel, on impulse, said, “I’ve heard about your son.”
The corners of his mouth jerked. “Name me one person who has spent twenty-four hours in St. Elmo and hasn’t heard.”
“And I’m sorry.”
“I appreciate that.” He sounded unmoved. “I’m going through the motions, that’s all. Therapy? Hell, I’ve had therapy. There’s just one thing they can’t make me understand.”
“What?”
“Why I should be alive.”
The windshield wipers slashed back and forth. Isabel said, “I imagine a lot of people have argued with you about that. Anything I could say, you’d have a comeback ready.”
“Probably.”
They had reached Clem’s office, where Isabel had left her car. Before she got out, Isabel said, “Do you think Merriam really recognized me?”
He considered. “I couldn’t tell.”
“I think she knew who I was,” Isabel said, but when she thought back on it, she wasn’t really sure.
Back at the trailer, Isabel changed into shorts, lay down, and fell instantly asleep. She awoke an hour or so later to the sound of knocking. She got up, splashed water on her face, and opened the door to Kimmie Dee Burke.
The rain had stopped and the vegetation was steaming. Isabel was too groggy to be delighted to see Kimmie Dee, but Kimmie Dee didn’t seem to care how Isabel felt. “Maybe you can do me a favor,” the girl said without preamble.
“What favor?”
“I need to borrow a pencil and some writing paper.”
“A pencil, some—”
“And an envelope and a stamp. I know where Miss Merriam keeps them.”
There seemed little choice but to stand back and let Kimmie Dee in. The girl opened a drawer in an end table and brought out a pad of paper, a pencil, a package of envelopes, and a book of stamps. She carried them to the dining table. “I’m going to write a letter,” she said. She pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Make yourself at home,” said Isabel, but the irony was lost on Kimmie Dee. She had already opened the pad and bent over her work, her hair brushing the tabletop.
Unneeded for the moment, Isabel picked up her sketch pad and a pencil and doodled a couple of studies of Kimmie Dee. The girl was all angles: sharp elbows, sharp knees—
“Could you do me another favor?”
Isabel sighed. “What is it?”
Kimmie Dee raised her T-shirt and extracted a crumpled envelope from beneath the elastic waistband of her shorts. She held out the envelope to Isabel. “Write the address for me. I can’t do real writing yet.”
Isabel took the envelope. It was addressed to Mrs. Joy Burke at Cape St. Elmo. “This letter is to your mother,” she said.
“No, the other address. My daddy.”
The return address was a Buddy Burke, at the Regional Correctional Facility in Tallahassee. Kimmie Dee said, “It’s the Regional Correctional Facility. That’s a jail.”
The girl’s tone was matter-of-fact. Isabel tried to match it. “I see.” She wondered what crime Kimmie Dee’s father had committed.
She sat at the table. Kimmie Dee’s letter, the lines sloping down the page, was lying in front of her:
Daddy can I have boots. Please. I dont like Mr. S.
Love Kimmie Dee
I don’t like Mr. S. Mr. S., surely, was Ted Stiles. Looking over Isabel’s shoulder, Kimmie Dee said, “I need the boots before the contest. July Fourth.” She touched the letter. “Can you mail it for me?”
Isabel hesitated. She wasn’t sure what she had wandered into. “Does your mother know you’re writing this?”
Kimmie Dee’s jaw jutted. She didn’t answer the question. “I thought you could mail it.”
Isabel had given Kimmie Dee a pencil, paper, an envelope, and a stamp. She had addressed the envelope. Was she going to refuse to mail the letter? “All right,” she said, and the girl’s face pinkened.
Together, they folded the letter, sealed it, and put the stamp on. Kimmie Dee went home and Isabel took a walk down the beach, past the Beachcomber to the Cape St. Elmo postal substation. There, she dropped Kimmie Dee’s letter in the mail.
I don’t like Mr. S. Who was Ted Stiles, and what was his relationship to Kimmie Dee and her family? If Isabel got to know Kimmie Dee better, which looked highly likely, she would ask about Ted Stiles. Isabel could see that there was a lot of upheaval in Kimmie Dee’s life. She had begun to understand that Merriam— critical, censorious Merriam— had provided a haven for the girl. Isabel couldn’t help asking herself who, when Isabel had needed one, had provided a haven for Isabel?
At dinner that night, at the Beachcomber, Isabel saw Harry Mercer.
The sky was darkening to violet as she walked along the damp beach after mailing Kimmie Dee’s letter. Waves broke with a foamy slosh, and out on the water, buoys flashed to mark the channel. The lights at the Beachcomber winked through the dusk. It was time to eat, and her refrigerator held nothing of interest. She climbed the steps to the dock and went inside.
Fishnets festooned with seashells hung on the walls of the dining room. A waitress led Isabel to a table at a window with a view of the bay and the dock. The laminate
d menu offered fried grouper, fried oysters, fried shrimp, fried mullet, fried crab claws, french fries, and a “Capeburger Deluxe.”
She ordered the Capeburger and a beer, sat back, and eased her feet out of her sandals. The jukebox wailed. Her thoughts ranged over the events of the day— Merriam, Kimmie Dee and her letter, Clem Davenant.
Her thoughts lingered on Clem. She felt daunted by his despair. Yet today he had spoken to her frankly, almost as a friend.
Her burger arrived, a rock-hard pattie of greasy meat on an untoasted bun. She gnawed at it, looking out at the dock. Through the dusk, she saw the yellow lamp of an approaching boat. It pulled into a berth and a shadowy figure jumped out to tie up. She watched idly as two people unloaded gear and an ice chest. After a while, one of them, carrying diving equipment, walked toward her. When he was close enough, she saw that it was a lean man, tanned golden, with curly shoulder-length hair. He unlocked a door, went inside for a minute, and returned empty-handed to the boat. Soon, he and another man came back, carrying an ice chest between them. The other man was Harry Mercer.
Isabel sat with the unappetizing burger suspended in her fingers. Harry was not looking her way. He wore a black wetsuit top and swimming trunks, and he was bending sideways with the weight of the chest. His brown hair was wet and unruly, falling over his forehead.
Yes, it was Harry, the last person she had expected to see here. If there was anything Harry Mercer had been clear about, it was that he did not intend to spend his life in St. Elmo and environs. He was going to join the Coast Guard, maybe, or get a job with an oil company and go to Saudi Arabia. Harry planned to search for adventure.
So he had told her, in the whispered conversations they had had after they made love.
Isabel put down the hamburger. Harry was close now, passing the window. She averted her face. She wasn’t ready to greet him with a friendly “How’ve you been?” And she wasn’t at all sure how he would greet her.
She and Harry had been insane, both of them. Surely some of their intensity had come from putting one over on the ever-vigilant Merriam, yet in the end it had been more than that.
They had rarely spoken to each other at school. Isabel could remember watching Harry in the lunchroom, tracing the curve of his ear and the cords of his neck with her eyes. Sometimes he had turned toward her, and her blood had surged and she’d felt a sheen of moisture on her face like the one she felt now.
He had passed by, gone through the door. Time to pay up. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Time to pay up and go.
9
Harry had seen Isabel. He saw her turn her face away.
In the office, he unzipped his wetsuit and hung it up and pulled on khakis over his swimsuit. His hands were shaking, but that was from tiredness. He and Scooter had busted their tails today, working against the swells, barely able to see, half the time one of them undoing what the other had just done. On top of it, Harry had gotten seasick, or at least queasy, and had to sit on the bottom with a rock in his lap to hold him still until it passed off. Sitting there with muddy water swirling past him and the current pulling at his body, Harry had questioned how long this could go on. They had found a brass lantern today, and some barrel hoops and a few pieces of broken crockery. Where was the gold?
It was down there. It had to be. They had found enough already to know the big strike was there somewhere.
The stories you heard: barrels of gold, bricks of gold, medallions, chains, figurines, rings. So far, Harry and Scooter had found twenty or thirty cob coins they kept in a tackle box, and a few chunks of silver conglomerate.
Things had to pick up. Harry had read documented stories of people pulling hundreds of coins out of a wreck in a day, finding seventy-pound chunks of silver made up of a thousand reales. It wasn’t necessarily the people with the high-tech equipment who had done it, either. It could be small-timers like Harry. Locating the wreck was the hard part, and they had already found the wreck.
Scooter had found the wreck.
After a day like this, to walk past Isabel Anders. To walk past her, and see her turn her head away.
“I got to go home. I’m late,” he said to Scooter. Scooter grunted, and Harry walked out. Not looking toward Isabel’s table, he went to the parking lot and got in his truck.
Harry lived in a subdivision on the outskirts of St. Elmo, just past Margene’s MiniMart. His house, a two-bedroom ranch-style, was cramped for space, especially since Kathy had taken the family room for her beauty salon. Although it was late in the dinner hour, when Harry drove up he saw only one dim light burning— in the girls’ bedroom. An unfamiliar car was parked in the driveway.
When Harry saw the car, he muttered, “Shit.” He pulled up and parked at the curb. As soon as he walked through the front door, he could smell the smell, all the way in the living room.
Harry wandered into the kitchen, where there was no sign of supper. He checked the refrigerator for beer and didn’t find any. He could hear voices coming from behind the door to the salon. Although the door was closed now, it had been open sometime recently. He knew because of the smell.
Harry peeked into the salon. He saw Kathy in her pink smock, sweeping hair off the floor while a woman with pink curlers all over her head sat reading the Reader’s Digest.
The smell here was strong enough to make Harry sneeze, and Kathy looked up at the sound. She smiled. “Hi, hon. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Can I see you for a sec?” Harry said.
Kathy’s eyes swiveled to the customer.
“Just for a sec,” he insisted.
Kathy checked her watch, said, “Be right back” to the woman, and came out into the kitchen with Harry. When Harry closed the door behind her, she said, “Wow, what a day! And a late perm on top of everything. Give me a sweet, yummy kiss.”
Harry pursed his lips and bent down, but at the last minute he moved so she got his cheek instead of his mouth.
Kathy didn’t settle for his cheek. She grabbed his ears and planted a juicy kiss on his mouth. Harry pulled away. “For Christ’s sake, Kathy.”
She looked hurt. He ignored it. “Who’s parked in the drive?” he asked.
Kathy put a hand to her mouth. “Oh no! She’s a new customer, Harry. All the regulars know not to park there.”
“Yeah. Did she leave the salon door open, too? The whole house smells like a—”
“The girls left it open. I didn’t notice until a few minutes ago.” She patted his shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Harry.”
He folded his arms. “All I ask is a few simple things. No customer cars in the driveway. Keep the door closed, so we don’t all choke—”
Kathy put a finger to her lips. “Don’t yell, Harry. She’ll hear you.”
“I’ll say what I want in my own goddamn house.”
He watched Kathy’s eyes puddle up. Exactly what he needed. She blinked a couple of times and said, “I’ve got some chili to put in the microwave as soon as I’m finished.”
Harry usually liked chili. “I don’t know. I’ve got an upset stomach.”
“Oh no! Should you take some—”
He nodded at the door. “Don’t you have to get back?”
She checked her watch. “Oh, gosh.” She gave him a worried look. “Harry—”
“Go on. See you later.”
When the door closed, Harry walked through the house to a back bedroom, where he found his daughters, Jennifer and Cissy, lying on their twin beds like rag dolls. Their eyes were glued to their very own television set, which Harry should never have bought them.
Harry leaned in the doorway. “Hey there.”
“Hey.” Their heads didn’t move.
“You girls hungry?”
This time, Cissy glanced his way. “We had a snack. Mama’s doing a perm.”
“Right.” He remained in the doorway, watching them while they watched the tube. Jennifer’s mouth was half open and a shock of hair fell to the top of her glasses frames. Cissy, the prettier
one, had her mother’s creamy skin and curly hair. As far as Harry knew, for the last year or more he, their father, had not said one word they thought was worth listening to or done anything they admired.
Harry’s stomach did feel upset. “Cissy. Jennifer. Listen,” he said. Although he couldn’t tell whether they were actually paying attention, he went on: “I’m going out to get myself some supper. I don’t feel like eating chili. Tell your mother. All right?”
“Okay.”
All the way back to the Cape, Harry was light-headed. He had walked out. He had gotten away.
At the Beachcomber, though, the kitchen was about to close. A couple of strangers, almost through eating, were sitting at Isabel’s table. She was long gone.
10
Isabel stared into the darkness, listening to the grating rustle of the palms. She wished she had not seen Harry Mercer. She did not want to relive those days. She didn’t want to argue with herself about the way she had treated Harry.
All right, she had treated him badly. On the face of it, her behavior was indefensible. Harry had loved her, and—
And, damn it, she had loved Harry. There you had the problem, and a sad glimpse into Isabel’s psyche. The sickening truth was, she had run away from Cape St. Elmo with Ben Raboski because she hated Merriam, all right, but she had also run away because she loved Harry. She had been afraid of being consumed by her own feelings.
Oh, baloney.
Well, she had been afraid of never getting away if she didn’t go then. She was afraid she’d never get another chance.
Or maybe Merriam had held her too tightly, and she couldn’t stand being held.
Or all of the above.
Isabel tossed. She sat up and punched her pillow with her fist. Who knew why she had done it? She had been a mixed-up sixteen-year-old. Harry had probably forgotten the whole episode by now.
Isabel was having exactly the argument with herself she had intended to avoid. She was not going to allow herself to be thrown for a loop by something that happened in high school. She closed her eyes and emptied her mind. Eventually, she fell asleep and had a dream about Harry that was so searingly, throbbingly, gut-clutchingly sexy that she woke up vibrating and bathed in sweat.
The Complete Mystery Collection Page 123