SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY

by Ann Cook

  Later that morning Brandy’s benefactor at Fowler’s Bluff was surprised by her call. Brandy could picture the woman in her shapeless print dress, bending over the rotary phone, could remember her wide, pleasant mouth. “Yes,” she told Brandy, she had a vacant cabin at the fish camp, yes, for the next weekend. Clearly she was relieved that Brandy and John would bring their own boat. She would probably not be eager to rent Brandy her skiff again.

  * * * *

  When at last Brandy lounged beside John on the rear seat of their pontoon boat, Meg at her feet, she wondered why she had ever found the broad, sepia-colored Suwannee menacing. Tied to a post at the pier, their eighteen foot aluminum boat rose and fell with the current like a floating patio. On the opposite shore the bare limbs of tupelo and sweetgum spread under an umbrella of cypress.

  John exuded contentment. On the grill at the bow lay the remains of a speckled trout picnic, and in the live well swam two Suwannee bass. Brandy opened her notebook and leaned across the small table, where Cara and Marcia were stuffing napkins and paper plates into a plastic bag. One smudged page of notes almost escaped onto the deck, but Brandy captured it and thrust it back helter skelter into the notebook. Without comment, John turned his eyes upward and shook his head.

  MacGill moved to a swivel fishing chair beyond the live well. He drew on his pipe. “And how did you know, lass?”

  Brandy smiled. “The simplest solution’s usually the best. The scientific method teaches us that. The night I drove the Bullens to the motel in Cedar Key, Frank Bullen complained to me about Allison. Said she ran off to this desolate place and got herself bludgeoned to death in a cheap tourist cabin. Later it dawned on me. I hadn’t told him how or where she was killed. Neither had Detective Strong.

  “Then I remembered how he’d asked his housekeeper to spy on Allison. The woman was still sneaking around when I was there. The housekeeper said she’d reported Allison’s plans to her husband, said once Bullen followed Allison to a party and forced her to come home. Did it make sense he’d ignore her running away? The housekeeper also told me he’d gone on a business trip about that time.

  “I re-read the cashier’s account. Allison was frightened when she got to Otter Creek. Why? She didn’t know anyone in the area. I realized she must have been frightened of being followed. I’d seen the way Bullen controlled people, even his present wife. Maybe he made life intolerable for Allison. Maybe that’s why she tried to slip away with friends, why she took to staying in her room. His first wife, Blade’s mother, testified he was brutal, but no one believed her.”

  Cara gazed into the dark water. “And did he follow her?”

  “A man like that’s jealous. He had to be in complete charge of his wife at all times. He meant to bring her back. When he saw MacGill drive away with her and take her to a cabin.” She shrugged. “He probably jumped to the conclusion that she’d run away to another man. He said as much to me in the car that night.”

  The Scotsman knitted his brows. “For that, mind, I’m very sorry. God knows, I only meant to help her.”

  “Bullen would’ve been furious, anyway, when she refused to go home with him. He probably didn’t intend to kill her. Something in that tightly controlled mind must’ve snapped. He was already insanely jealous of his young wife, and he couldn’t stand that she wouldn’t obey. When I saw Bullen with his new wife, I remembered Robert Browning’s poem ‘My Last Duchess.’ It’s about a wealthy man who murdered his wife because he couldn’t control her. I began to think more seriously about Bullen as a suspect.”

  She stole a cautious look at Cara. “We think he put her body in the truck of his rental car. Probably thought he could dispose of it in the Gulf or bayou. Of course, the storm got worse and he couldn’t. Old timers say you couldn’t get near the water. When he came back for the child, she was gone. Later he heard she was safe at the school.”

  Cara rested her chin on her hand. “The better for me,” she said.

  “Cara knows now that Bullen didn’t believe she was really his daughter. He didn’t mind leaving her with a woman who wanted her so badly. He couldn’t claim her, anyway, without casting suspicion on himself.”

  “I hope he was right about my real father,” Cara said. Her tone turned ironic. “But don’t worry. I won’t try to find out.”

  Brandy gave her a wry look and went on. “Allison’s aunt received her post card and thought Allison was safe in Cedar Key; they’d agreed not to communicate once she arrived, except in an emergency. Allison was afraid her husband would trace her.”

  Cara sighed. “Something warned me about Frank Bullen, even before you called. I wouldn’t go to New York. I didn’t like Mrs. Bullen’s superior air. Or her suspicions about me.” She glanced at Mar-cia with a half smile. “But mainly it was Bullen himself. He wanted to plan my whole future, and he practically called Cedar Key a hick town. He thought the hotel work Mr. MacGill gave me was demeaning. He even wanted to dictate what I wear. I saw how he bossed around his wife. I didn’t know what control was until I met him.”

  Marcia frowned. “How can the Sheriff s Office prove he murdered his wife?”

  Brandy patted her notebook. “Bullen was extradited from New York two days ago. The State’s Attorney has a tight case. Frank Bullen’s prints matched the partial on the flashlight. But other evidence pointed to Bullen even before that. An enlarged photograph shows him among the unknowns at the Island Hotel during the hurricane.

  “After all, Bullen knew her bus schedule. It would’ve been simple to rent an unfamiliar car and be at Otter Creek when she got there. The cashier said she heard another car pull out right after MacGill’s.”

  The Scotsman lowered his thick eyebrows in concentration. “If I follow you, lass, he parked behind the hotel like the others and took refuge in the lobby. When it came his turn to lay up sandbags in the basement, he discovered the cistern and dragged the poor woman’s body down the back stairs.”

  The basement always horrified Cara, Brandy knew, and she shuddered, remembering the grim mouth of the cistern, hidden away in a separate room, the fetid smell of its water. But Cara’s dark eyes had turned wistful. “You also asked for my mother’s wedding portrait.”

  “The other vital enlargement,” Brandy said. “I’d admired the elaborate ring Frank Bullen’s present wife wore. Then I realized it looked familiar. It’s a dead ringer for the one in Allison’s wedding portrait. The insurance company verified that. It’s also a dead ringer for the one the cashier described.”

  MacGill’s lower lip came forward. “The murdering sod would splash money around to make a show, but he wouldn’t part with an expensive piece of jewelry? You’re saying he took it off his dead wife’s hand?”

  Brandy nodded. “Might’ve identified the skeleton. Years later he couldn’t resist giving it to his new wife.”

  Marcia dropped her head. “Fact is, we might’ve known the truth sooner if I hadn’t been so foolish. I kept the blue teddy bear all those years, in case I needed to produce it for Cara. Then when the time came, I hadn’t the courage to let her go.” Her expression turned fierce. “But that man actually meant to pay me for rearing her.”

  “Frank Bullen was not noted for sensitivity,” Brandy said. “But there’s even more to the case against him. It’s surprising what an eleven-year old sees. Blade may have been a terror, but he was a bright terror. Early on, he figured out what had happened when his stepmother disappeared. Right after his father returned from his business trip, Blade noticed her ring suddenly turned up in his father’s dresser drawer. The little cherub was accustomed to rifling through Bullen’s things, looking for money.

  “When his father asked him to check up on Anthony Rossi, Blade confronted him with the truth. Some friendly blackmail between son and father.”

  MacGill puffed on his pipe and a wisp of smoke drifted to starboard. “A canny lad, he was, always had an eye
for the main chance.”

  “The housekeeper told me Bullen was disappointed in his son. Now Blade says his father threatened to cut him out of his will, said if Blade let Rossi rake the old murder case up, Blade wouldn’t get a cent.” Brandy frowned, remembering. “After the son killed poor Rossi, he tried to throw me offthe scent, pretended to be my editor telling me to come back to Gainesville. In New York he set a drug dealer after me.” She grinned. “Now he’s trying to save his own skin by singing like a bird. His testimony should cinch the case.”

  Cara stood, picked up her tote bag, and stooped to give Meg a final pat. The cream-colored mask lifted beside Brandy’s feet, then dropped between her paws with a soft “wuff.”

  Brandy watched Cara join her foster mother at the metal gate. “In a few months both cases will go to trial.”

  Cara nodded. “And in a few days I go to the University of Florida. I’ve got an interview in the Fine Arts Department. I’m also reporting to a Gainesville photography studio. Be taking yearbook pictures part time. The head photographer read about me in Brandy’s story and thought I deserved a chance.” She linked arms with Marcia. “Before that, Mother and I are going to relax, take a little trip across state to St. Augustine. Unlike Frank Bullen, we like historic places.”

  With a smile, Marcia turned to MacGill. “We’ve invited Angus to join us. He deserves a rest. Detective Strong gave him quite a scare.”

  “And Truck?”

  “Truck will have to find someone more his type.”

  Cara knows her biological identity now, Brandy thought, had faced her terror of storms, had made Marcia understand she meant to live her own life. Perhaps Cara had indeed climbed out of her own private hell and found the simple salvation that had always been before her.

  MacGill put out his pipe, tucked it in his pocket, and helped steady Marcia as she stepped off the gently rocking boat onto the dock.

  “You’ll probably get a lot of Bullen’s money eventually,” Brandy said. “He’s your legal father.”

  Cara arched her neck. “I don’t want anything of his.”

  Brandy leaned toward her. “Think of the money like this. It should’ve gone to your mother.” She glanced again at her note pad. “According to Strong, we all should agree with the Bible. ‘The Lord will abhor the bloody, deceitful man.’”

  Cara nodded. “The lowest circle in hell, I remember, was for deceit.”

  As Marcia’s station wagon rattled out into the road and headed for Cedar Key, Brandy laid her bulging notebook on the boat table, studied its frayed edges, and then gazed at her disheveled shirt and jeans. Another memory rankled. She turned her face up to John’s. “I suppose Tiffany Moore was tidy.”

  He drew her against him and tucked her head under his chin. “Tidy and incompetent. True, most architects have a sense of order. But the saying is, opposites attract. You and Strong aren’t the only ones who can quote. Do you remember the Robert Herrick poem? ‘A sweet disorder’ does ‘more bewitch me than when Art is too precise in every part.’ Somehow, I often think of that line.”

  She lifted her head and looked into teasing eyes.

  “Miss Tiffany Moore wrote her finale with our firm,” John said,” when she decided to improve the blue prints after I’d signed off on them. I’d spent hours trying to drum a few fundamentals into that spacey intern’s head.”

  Brandy closed her eyes and drifted with the river. “There’s one thing I never figured out,” she said, ruffling one of Meg’s golden ears. “Why did Moose suddenly leave the houseboat the night of the hurricane? Cara and I saw him watching the mainland, and then he took the skiff and went ashore. It gave us a chance to get away.”

  Her gaze followed the opposite riverbank where a dark rim of trees curved toward Little Turkey Island.

  “When the marina owner was captured, he explained why you two got away,” John said. “Moose believed the cops had nailed him. He thought they were using a spot light to search for his boat. He saw it moving among the trees over on the mainland, a bright, round light. He went ashore to investigate. No one was there.”

  During the hurricane Brandy remembered asking Cara where the Shell mound ghost was when they needed her light. Maybe she had been there, after all.