The man put out his hand to me and said, "Pleased to meet y'all. My name's Tom Bradenton. I sort of own the place."
Chapter 4
Well, that explained how he could dress like a beach bum and still work here, I thought as I shook hands with him. "It's nice to meet you," I told him. "The resort is just lovely."
"Thanks, I like it here, too." He turned to Luke and shook hands with him. "Hey, Luke, how you doin'?"
"All right, I guess," Luke said. "We've been wrangling tourists all evening."
"Yeah, it can get crazy in Old Town, can't it? To be honest, I don't go down there that much. After growing up here, you feel like you've seen it all before. I stay pretty close to home."
I'd heard similar sentiments expressed by people who lived in areas that drew a lot of tourists. They tended to keep a low profile and just go on about their business.
"So if you folks need anything, just let me know," Tom Bradenton continued. "I'm usually around."
"We appreciate that, Mr. Bradenton," I said.
He flashed a grin at me. "Tom," he said. "Mr. Bradenton – "
"Was your father," I finished for him.
"That's right. Well, good night," he added as he turned toward a small room just off the lobby. The door was open, and from the glimpse I got inside, the room was an office, although a fairly cluttered and informal one. That seemed to fit Tom Bradenton's personality.
Luke and I went upstairs to our rooms. The second floor corridor was dimly lit. There weren't any fluorescent lights, just regular bulbs in old-fashioned wall sconces. It was a nice, quaint touch that fit in with the rest of the place.
So was the elegant four-poster bed in my room and the gleaming hardwood dresser and chest. The bathroom was small, with most of the space taken up by a claw-footed bathtub. I had a nice soak in it, then climbed into bed and slept well. The trip down here and the evening at Sloppy Joe's had worn me out.
* * *
The resort provided a continental breakfast in the dining room of the main house. I sampled the pecan pancakes and found them to be delicious. Luke went for the beer-battered version and pronounced them wonderful. The coffee was excellent, too. Tom Brandenton put on a good spread.
Luke and I were there at nine o'clock. During the next hour, most of the members of our tour wandered in to eat before setting out on the day's activities.
Sheila Thompson was by herself. Her husband Phil, she explained to me, had been up well before the crack of dawn and by now would be miles out in the Atlantic on a charter boat, deep-sea fishing. I couldn't imagine why anybody would want to do that – I can get seasick on a mile-long ferry ride – but since that was how Phil preferred to spend his time, it was fine with me.
Matt and Aimee Altman were yawning, a not surprising indication that they hadn't gotten much sleep. The others all seemed a little brighter-eyed. The only ones who hadn't shown up by nine-forty-five were Walter Harvick and Ronnie Scanlon. I didn't want to have to go hunt them down, so I hoped they would put in an appearance soon.
Everyone was finished with breakfast and had drifted back out into the lobby by ten. Footsteps on the stairs made me look up. Walter was coming down by himself. I met him at the bottom of the staircase and said, "Mornin', Mr. Harvick. How are you?"
"Fine," he said. "Ready to visit the Hemingway House. By the way, if you need any help pointing out or explaining things, just let me know. I've been there many times."
"I think I can manage, thanks," I said, trying not to let him see my irritation. It was true that he probably knew a lot more about Hemingway than I did, but this was my tour, doggone it. I'd been in this business long enough to know that buffs of any sort can be the bane of a tour director. "You're a little too late for breakfast."
"That's all right. I had coffee in my room. That's all I need."
"What about Ms. Scanlon?"
He frowned. "What about her?"
"Well, I sort of thought the two of you would be together . . ."
My voice trailed off as he frowned at me. Looked like I had sort of stepped in it, unintentionally. The way they'd been carrying on with each other in Sloppy Joe's and on the way back here, I'd just assumed they would be spending the rest of the night together.
But even if they had, I reminded myself, Ronnie could have gone back to her room early this morning, or Walter back to his, depending on where they'd stayed. I'd jumped the gun by assuming they'd come down together.
"I see," Walter said coolly. "You thought that because we were both a bit under the influence last night, there was some sort of illicit romance going on."
I tried to repair the damage by saying, "There's nothing illicit about a couple of folks enjoyin' each other's company – "
More footsteps made me glance up. Ronnie Scanlon was coming down the stairs, and the look she gave Walter was downright icy, especially considering the fact that Key West had never experienced a frost, as far as anyone knew.
Trouble in Paradise, I thought. Something had happened between these two, and it hadn't been good.
"Good morning, Ms. Dickinson," Ronnie greeted me. She looked narrow-eyed at Walter and added, "Mr. Harvick."
"Ms. Scanlon," he said, every bit as cold and unfriendly as she was.
I wasn't sure what held the most potential for trouble, a romance between these two or the falling-out that had obviously taken place. None of it was my business, though. We were here to see the sights, starting with the Hemingway House, and that was what we were going to do.
"Come on everybody," I said as I turned toward the door. "Let's get started."
I led the way with Luke bringing up the rear to corral any stragglers. I was wearing sandals, slacks, and a sleeveless lime green blouse. Luke had opted for shorts and a t-shirt, and the clients were all dressed very casually as well, with the younger women showing quite a bit of skin. You didn't have to be on Key West for very long before a tendency toward informality kicked in.
As we headed for the parking lot I saw Tom Bradenton coming toward us. He wore cut-off jeans and a t-shirt and was wet from head to foot, having just come out of the ocean from a morning swim, I thought. "Mornin', y'all," he said with a wave as we went past him.
"Is that the handyman who let us in last night?" Doris Horton asked me.
"He's very handsome," Julia Dunn said, "and I think he was smiling at you, Ms. Dickinson."
"Oh, I think he's just friendly," I said without explaining who Tom really was. "He was smilin' at all of us."
I wasn't sure that was completely true, though. There had seemed to be a little extra warmth in Tom's eyes as he looked at me.
Not that it mattered. We were only going to be there for three days.
Luke and I got everybody loaded onto the van and started on the short drive across the island. I'd been to Key West before, as a tourist myself, so I knew that street parking was a problem in most places around Old Town. I'd made an arrangement with one of the off-street lots to hold a place for us. That meant a little more expense and walking, but luckily Key West was small. We were only a few blocks from the Hemingway House, at Whitehead and Olivia, when we climbed out of the van.
Ronnie Scanlon had stopped shooting venomous looks at Walter. Now she was just ignoring him. That was an improvement as far as I was concerned.
The house that Ernest and Pauline Hemingway bought and remodeled in 1931 is a sprawling, two-story structure built of limestone blocks quarried on-site. It has tall windows flanked by greenish-yellow shutters, and verandahs wrap all the way around both floors, the upper one forming a balcony enclosed by a wrought-iron railing. A large yard with flower beds and palm trees surrounds the house.
The whole house is open to the public except for Hemingway's writing room, which is upstairs above an old carriage house in the back of the property. Tourists can look into that room, where he wrote parts of several novels and a number of short stories, through a screen but can't go in.
A small, white-framed ticket booth with the same sort of shuttered wind
ows sits out front. I'd already paid the admission fee for the entire group, so we didn't have to stand in line to get in. I did, however, point out the sign displayed prominently next to the ticket window: PLEASE DO NOT PICK UP CATS.
"The famous six-toed cats?" Kerry Matheson asked.
"That's right," I told her. "Descended from the ones that lived here when Hemingway did."
Walter said, "Actually, some of them have seven or eight toes. They're quite unusual looking."
"And they run free," I added. "Just don't pick 'em up, like the sign says."
We moved on to the first floor verandah and walked all the way around the house first, getting a good view of the grounds. Pauline Hemingway had put in a swimming pool, quite an extravagance for the time. The water was rather greenish at the moment and didn't look too attractive to me. I figured that with the year-round heat, it would be pretty hard to maintain a pool. The algae had to love it here in Key West.
The heat was worse inside, without much air stirring despite a number of open windows and doors. Walter pointed to one of the fancy chandeliers and said, "The house had ceiling fans when the Hemingways bought it, but Pauline had them taken out and replaced with these chandeliers."
"Not smart," Frank Cleburne said. He had taken a handkerchief from the back pocket of his shorts and used it to mop sweat from his forehead. "Actually what the place could use is a good central AC unit."
Walter looked at him with something like horror and said, "That would violate the historical accuracy of the site."
"Yeah, but it'd be a lot cooler."
Walter shook his head as if he couldn't even begin to comprehend that attitude. Frank looked a little annoyed by Walter's reaction, but his wife Jennie touched him on the arm and steered him into one of the other rooms.
I'd been here before, but it had been a number of years earlier. I hadn't forgotten how the cats were all over the place, though. Tabbies, calicos, longhairs and short, all of them so used to strangers trooping around that they paid little attention to the tourists. Of course, cats don't really get worked up much about humans to start with. I think they consider us a lower form of life to be tolerated as long as we behave ourselves. Not all of them had six or more toes, either. Some of them were just plain ol' alley cats. They would put up with being petted, but that was about it.
"They're so sweet," Aimee Altman said. She slid her hand under the belly of a big orange tabby, but her husband Matt stopped her.
"Remember, we're not supposed to pick them up," he told her.
"What would it hurt?"
"I imagine that's the owners' way of saying that if you get clawed it's not their fault, and you can't sue them."
"More than likely," I agreed with him. "Anyway, we'd better follow the rules."
Aimee shrugged and let go of the tabby. She was darned cute, with a heart-shaped face, long blond hair so pale it was almost white, and the sort of body that twenty-year-olds don't think anything about. It never occurs to them that in another fifteen or twenty years, they'll have to work really, really hard to look half that good. Matt absolutely adored her, you could tell that just by looking at him.
The house is simply but comfortably furnished with heavy Spanish-style furniture, much of which actually had belonged to the Hemingways, and you can tell it would have been a nice place to live. Other than the fact that Ernest Hemingway lived here, though, there isn't really anything that distinctive about it. It's just a nice old house.
After touring both floors, we left through a side door and crossed the yard to the squarish, two-story outbuilding where Hemingway's studio was located. An outside staircase led up to the second floor. Walter pointed up to the second-floor balcony of the main house and said, "When Hemingway lived here, he had a gate cut in the railing and a rope bridge strung from the balcony over to the other building so he could get to his studio without having to go downstairs."
Luke leaned over to me and whispered, "Did you know that?"
"As a matter of fact, I did," I answered with a slight frown. I prided myself on doing my homework before I led these tours, and here Walter was stepping all over the things I had learned.
You don't last long in business by fussing at your customers, though, so I didn't say anything to him. Let him show off all he wanted to. It wasn't having any effect on Ronnie Scanlon, who alternated between ignoring him and glaring at him. Whatever had happened between them, she seemed to be determined not to let him ruin her trip for her . . . but he was coming close to it anyway.
We went upstairs to look at the writing room. The screened-off door was small enough that only a couple of people could look at a time. The room was spacious and bright, with windows on opposite walls and two French doors in a third wall that let in plenty of light. A small round table with a typewriter on it sat in the center of the room with a plain, straight-backed chair in front of it. Short bookshelves were arranged around the walls, and above the bookshelf between the French doors was the mounted head of an antelope – or some animal like that, I'm not any sort of hunter – one of Hemingway's trophies. A mounted fish hung on the same wall, off to the side, and there were framed portraits of Hemingway from different times in his life, too.
It probably hadn't looked much like this when he was here, I thought. Back then it had been a place for him to work; now it was a museum. I could imagine the desk with stacks of paper around the typewriter and a pencil lying here and there. I could see Hemingway sitting there, blunt fingers pounding the keys or holding one of the pencils as he made corrections on a manuscript. I wouldn't be leading these literary tours if something about the whole process of writing didn't strike me as almost magical and very appealing.
"What did he write here?" Doris Horton asked.
As I was coming to expect, Walter was quick with the answer and beat me to it. "Parts of Death in the Afternoon, The Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. And some short stories as well, like 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro'. Hemingway never stayed still for too long at a time, so it was unusual for him to start and finish a project in the same place. Even though this was his main residence for almost a decade, he was always jaunting off to Paris or New York or Idaho or Cuba. Quite a life, don't you think?"
"I don't know," Julia Dunn said. "I think I'd get tired of traveling around all the time. I don't mind sightseeing like this, but when I'm done I want to go home."
"Ah, but that misses all the romance of being a writer," Walter said.
"As if you'd know anything about romance," Ronnie muttered. If Walter heard her, he didn't show any sign of it.
Somebody was sure disappointed, I thought, but then I steered my mind quickly away from that.
It never hurts to get to know your clients, but some things you're just better off not knowing.
Chapter 5
Downstairs in the old carriage house was the museum bookstore and gift shop. I turned the members of the group loose to browse down there or wander around the grounds and look at things on their own.
Matt and Aimee headed off into the gardens right away, hand in hand. I figured they planned to find a hidden spot for some smooching. Kerry, Sheila, Jennie, Doris, and Julia formed another group and focused their attention on the gift shop. That left George and Frank on their own. They stuck their hands in their pockets and made some awkward small talk. Wives always bond on these trips better than husbands do.
I figured out why Frank had made that comment about central air conditioning units. Turned out he sold and installed them, back in Oklahoma. That meant George had to tell Frank about his plumbing supply business in Kentucky.
I looked around for Walter and Ronnie but didn't see them anywhere. Luke was hunkered down on one of the patios, petting a longhaired black and white cat that seemed to really be enjoying it. Out of curiosity, I counted the toes. The front paws were normal, but the cat had six toes on its hind feet.
"Hey, Luke," I said. "Come over here a minute, will you?"
He
gave the cat's ears a last scratch and said, "See you later, buddy." Then he stood up and came over to me. "What's up, Miz D?"
"We seem to be missin' a couple of clients."
He grinned. "You mean the Altmans? I'm sure they're around somewhere." His voice lowered to a conspiratorial tone. "I think they're honeymooners."
"Yeah, I got that idea. I was talking about Mr. Harvick and Ms. Scanlon."
Luke looked around and frowned. "They're probably in the house. He's kind of a show-off. Probably trying to impress her with all he knows about Hemingway."
"Maybe." I had a bad feeling crawling around in the back of my mind anyway. We'd run into trouble on previous tours, and clearly there was some hostility between those two. As annoying as Walter was, I didn't want Ronnie trying to choke him to death. "You stay here in case anybody needs anything. I'm gonna go see if I can find them."
"Would you like me to do that?"
"No, I've got it," I told him. Back there in that nervous part of my brain, I was thinking that if anybody was going to stumble over a dead body, it ought to be me, not Luke. At least I had some experience along those lines.
There was no need to be nervous, I told myself as I started walking around the grounds of the estate. Absolutely no reason to think that anything bad might have happened. What was in the past was in the past. I went down a curving path that led between some palm trees and by some thick shrubbery. No way was I going to see the legs of a corpse sticking out of those bushes, I thought.
And I was right. No legs, arms, or any other part of a dead body.
But I did hear a feminine giggle coming from back there in the vegetation.
That would be Matt and Aimee Altman, I guessed. They'd found themselves a nice romantic spot for some canoodling. I was happy for them, but that didn't help me find Walter and Ronnie. They might still be at each other's throat for all I knew.
Then I heard a voice that didn't belong to Aimee saying, "Oh, Walter, I'm so glad we worked things out. I knew it couldn't end like that."
Well, well. So Walter and Ronnie had made up after all. I still didn't know what had happened between them the night before, didn't want to know. It was enough that she wouldn't be glaring at him for the rest of the trip and he wouldn't be acting supercilious toward her. I hoped.
For Whom The Funeral Bell Tolls Page 3