Duma Key, Page 43

  "You're tough, Kathi."

  "Not so tough," she said, wiping her eyes. "Truth is, I'm a freakin marshmallow."

  Then Kamen was towering over me. "If you need help, get in touch ASAP."

  "Yep," I said. "You be the KamenDoc."

  Kamen smiled. It was like having God smile on you. "I don't think all's right with you yet, Edgar. I can only hope it will be right. No one deserves more to land with the shiny side up and the rubber side down."

  I hugged him. A one-armed hug, but he made up for it.

  I walked out to the plane beside Pam. We stood at the foot of the boarding stairs while the others got on. She was holding my hand in both of hers, looking up at me.

  "I'm only going to kiss you on the cheek, Edgar. Illy's watching and I don't want her to get the wrong idea."

  She did so, then said, "I'm worried about you. There's a white look around your eyes that I don't like."

  "Elizabeth--"

  She shook her head a tiny bit. "It was there last night, even before she came to the gallery. Even when you were at your happiest. A white look. I don't know how to describe it any better than that. I only saw it once before, back in 1992, when it looked for a little while like you might miss that balloon payment and lose the business."

  The jet engines were whining and a hot breeze was blowing her hair around her face, tumbling her careful beauty-shop curls into something younger and more natural. "Can I ask you something, Eddie?"

  "Of course."

  "Could you paint anywhere? Or does it have to be here?"

  "Anywhere, I think. But it would be different somewhere else."

  She was looking at me fixedly. Almost pleadingly. "Just the same, a change might be good. You need to lose that white look. I'm not talking about coming back to Minnesota, necessarily, just going . . . somewhere else. Will you think about it?"

  "Yes." But not until I saw what was in the red picnic basket. And not until I'd made at least one trip to the south end of the Key. And I thought I could do that. Because Ilse was the one who'd gotten sick, not me. All I'd had was one of my red-tinged flashbacks to the accident. And that phantom itch.

  "Be well, Edgar. I don't know exactly what's become of you, but there's still enough of the old you to love." She stood on tiptoe in her white sandals--bought specially for this trip, I had no doubt--and planted another soft kiss on my stubbly cheek.

  "Thank you," I said. "Thank you for last night."

  "No thanks required," she said. "It was sweet."

  She squeezed my hand. Then she was up the stairs and gone.

  vi

  Outside Delta departures again. This time without Jack.

  "Just you and me, Miss Cookie," I said. "Looks like we closed down the bar."

  Then I saw she was crying and wrapped my arm around her.

  "Daddy, I wish I could stay here with you."

  "Go back, honey. Study for your test and knock the hell out of it. I'll see you soon."

  She pulled back. Looked at me anxiously. "You'll be okay?"

  "Yes. And you be okay, too."

  "I will. I will."

  I hugged her again. "Go on. Check in. Buy magazines. Watch CNN. Fly well."

  "All right, Daddy. It was amazing."

  "You're amazing."

  She gave me a hearty smack on the mouth--to make up for the one her mother had held back on, perhaps--and went in through the sliding doors. She turned back once and waved to me, by then little more than a girl-shape behind the polarized glass. I wish with all my heart that I could have seen her better, because I never saw her again.

  vii

  From the Ringling Art Museum I had left messages for Wireman--one at the funeral home and one on El Palacio's answering machine--saying I'd be back around three, and asking him to meet me there. I also asked him to tell Jack that if Jack was old enough to vote and party with FSU sorority girls, he was old enough to take care of his damned cell phone.

  It was actually close to three-thirty when I arrived back on the Key, but both Jack's car and Elizabeth's vintage silver Benz were parked on the cracked square to the right of Big Pink, and the two of them were sitting on my back stoop, drinking iced tea. Jack was still wearing his gray suit, but his hair was once more in its customary disarray and he was wearing a Devil Rays tee under his jacket. Wireman was wearing black jeans and a white shirt, open at the collar; a Nebraska Cornhuskers gimme cap was cocked back on his head.

  I parked, got out, and stretched, trying to get my bad hip in gear. They stood up and came to meet me, neither of them smiling.

  "Everyone gone, amigo?" Wireman asked.

  "Everyone but my Aunt Jean and Uncle Ben," I said. "They're veteran freeloaders, dedicated to squeezing a good thing to the very last drop."

  Jack smiled without much humor. "Every family's got a few," he said.

  "How are you?" I asked Wireman.

  "About Elizabeth I'm okay. Hadlock said it was probably for the best this way, and I suppose he's right. Her leaving me what may amount to a hundred and sixty million dollars in cash, securities, and properties . . ." He shook his head. "That's different. Maybe someday I'll have the luxury of trying to get my head around it, but right now . . ."

  "Right now something's going on."

  "Si, senor. And it's very weird."

  "How much have you told Jack?"

  Wireman looked a bit uncomfortable. "Well, I tell you what, amigo. Once I started, it was damn hard to find a reasonable stopping place."

  "He told me all of it," Jack said. "Or so he claims. Including what he thinks you did about restoring his eyesight, and what you think you did to Candy Brown." He paused. "And the two little girls you saw."

  "Are you okay with the Candy Brown thing?" I asked.

  "If it was up to me, I'd give you a medal. And the people of Sarasota would probably give you your own float in the Memorial Day parade." Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets. "But if you told me last fall that stuff like this could happen outside of M. Night Shyamalan movies, I would have laughed."

  "What about last week?" I asked.

  Jack thought about it. On the other side of Big Pink, the waves came steadily in. Under my living room and bedroom, the shells would be talking. "No," he said. "Probably wouldn't've laughed then. I knew from the first there was something about you, Edgar. You got here, and . . ." He ran the fingers of his two hands together, lacing them. And I thought that was right. That was how it had been. Like the fingers of two hands lacing together. And the fact that I only had one hand had never mattered.

  Not here.

  "What are you saying, hermano?" Wireman asked.

  Jack shrugged. "Edgar and Duma. Duma and Edgar. It was like they were waiting for each other." He looked embarrassed, but not unsure.

  I cocked a thumb at my house. "Let's go in."

  "Tell him about finding the basket first," Wireman said to Jack.

  Jack shrugged. "Wasn't no thing; didn't take twenty minutes. It was sitting up on top of some old bureau at the far end of the attic. Light from one of the vents to the outside was shining in on it. Like it wanted to be found." He glanced at Wireman, who nodded agreement. "Anyway, we took it down to the kitchen and looked inside. It was heavier than hell."

  Jack talking about the heaviness of the basket made me think of how Melda, the housekeeper, had been holding it in the family portrait: with her arms bunched. Apparently it had been heavy back then, too.

  "Wireman told me to bring the basket down here and leave it for you, since I had a key . . . only I didn't need a key. Place was unlocked."

  "Was the door actually open?"

  "Nope. What I did first was turn my key and actually lock it again. Gave me a hell of a surprise."

  "Come on," Wireman said, leading the way. "Show and Tell time."

  There was a fair amount of Florida Gulf Coast scattered on the hardwood floor of the entry: sand, small shells, a couple of sophora husks, and a few bits of dried sawgrass. There were also tracks. The sneaker-pri
nts were Jack's. It was the others that made my skin freckle with goosebumps. I made out three sets, one large and two small. The small ones were the tracks of children. All of those feet had been bare.

  "Do you see how they go up the stairs, fading as they go?" Jack said.

  "Yes," I said. My voice sounded faint and faraway to my own ears.

  "I walked beside them, because I didn't want to mess them up," Jack said. "If I'd known then what Wireman told me while we were waiting for you, I don't think I could have gone up at all."

  "I don't blame you," I said.

  "But there was no one there," Jack said. "Just . . . well, you'll see. And look." He led me to the side of the stairs. The ninth riser was on our eye-level, and with the light striking across it, I could see, very faintly, the tracks of small bare feet pointing the other way.

  Jack said, "This looks pretty clear to me. The kids went up to your studio, then came back down again. The adult stayed by the front door, probably as lookout . . . although if this was the middle of the night, there probably wasn't much to look out for. Have you been setting the burglar alarm?"

  "No," I said, not quite meeting his eye. "I can't remember the numbers. I keep them on a slip of paper in my wallet, but each time I came through the door turned into a race against time, me versus that fucking beeper on the wall--"

  "It's okay." Wireman gripped my shoulder. "These burglars didn't take; they left."

  "You don't really believe Miss Eastlake's dead sisters paid you another visit, do you?" Jack asked.

  "Actually," I said, "I think they did." I thought that would sound stupid in the bright light of an April afternoon, with a ton of sunlight pouring down and reflecting off the Gulf, but it didn't.

  "In Scooby Doo, it would turn out to be the crazy librarian," Jack said. "You know, trying to scare you off the Key so he could keep the treasure for himself."

  "If only," I said.

  "Suppose those small tracks were made by Tessie and Laura Eastlake," Wireman said. "Who made the bigger ones?"

  Neither of us replied.

  "Let's go upstairs," I said at last. "I want to look in the basket."

  We went up (avoiding the tracks--not to preserve them, but simply because none of us wanted to step on them) to Little Pink. The picnic basket, looking just like the one I'd drawn with the red pen I'd pilfered from Gene Hadlock's examining room, was sitting on the carpet, but my eyes were drawn first to my easel.

  "You can believe I beat a hasty retreat when I saw that," Jack said.

  I could believe it, but I felt no urge to retreat. Quite the opposite. I was drawn forward instead, like an iron bolt to a magnet. A fresh canvas had been set up there and then, sometime in the dead of night--maybe while Elizabeth had been dying, maybe while I'd been having sex with Pam for the last time, maybe while I'd been sleeping beside her--a finger had dipped into my paint. Whose finger? I didn't know. What color? That was obvious: red. The letters that staggered and draggled and dripped their way across the canvas were red. And accusing. They almost seemed to shout.

  viii

  "Found art," I said in a dry, rattlebox voice that hardly sounded like my own.

  "Is that what it is?" Wireman asked.

  "Sure." The letters seemed to waver in front of me, and I wiped my eyes. "Graffiti art. They'd love it at the Scoto."

  "Maybe, but that's some creepy shit," Jack said. "I hate it."

  So did I. And it was my studio, goddammit, mine. I had a lease. I snatched the canvas off the easel, momentarily expecting it to burn my fingers. It didn't. It was just a canvas, after all, one I'd stretched myself. I put it against the wall, facing in. "Is that better?"

  "It is, actually," Jack said, and Wireman nodded. "Edgar . . . if those little girls were here . . . can ghosts write on canvas?"

  "If they can move Ouija board planchettes and write in window-frost, I imagine they could write on a canvas," I said. Then, rather reluctantly, I added: "But I don't see ghosts unlocking my front door. Or putting a canvas up on the easel to begin with."

  "There wasn't a canvas there?" Wireman asked.

  "I'm pretty sure not. The blank ones are all racked in the corner."

  "Who's the sister?" Jack wanted to know. "Who's the sister they're asking about?"

  "It must be Elizabeth," I said. "She was the only sister left."

  "Bullshit," Wireman said. "If Tessie and Laura were on the ever-popular other side of the veil, they wouldn't have any problem locating sister Elizabeth; she was right here on Duma Key for over fifty-five years, and Duma was the only place they ever knew."

  "What about the others?" I asked.

  "Maria and Hannah both died," Wireman said. "Hannah in the seventies, in New York--Ossining, I think--and Maria in the early eighties, somewhere out west. Both married, Maria a couple of times. I know that from Chris Shannington, not Miss Eastlake. She sometimes talked about her father, but hardly ever about her sisters. She cut herself off from the rest of her family after she and John came back to Duma in 1951."

  where our sister?

  "And Adriana? What about her?"

  He shrugged. "Quien sabe? History ate her up. Shannington thinks she and her new husband probably went back to Atlanta after the search for the babby-uns was called off; they weren't here for the memorial service."

  "She might have blamed Daddy for what happened," Jack said.

  Wireman nodded. "Or maybe she just couldn't stand to hang around."

  I remembered Adriana's pouty I-want-to-be-somewhere-else look in the family portrait and thought Wireman might be onto something there.

  "In any case," Wireman went on, "she has to be dead, too. If she was alive, she'd be almost a hundred. Odds of that are mighty slim."

  where our sister?

  Wireman gripped my arm and turned me to face him. His face looked drawn and old. "Muchacho, if something supernatural killed Miss Eastlake in order to shut her up, maybe we ought to take the hint and get off Duma Key."

  "I think it might be too late for that," I said.

  "Why?"

  "Because she's awake again. Elizabeth said so before she died."

  "Who's awake?"

  "Perse," I said.

  "Who is that?"

  "I don't know," I said. "But I think we're supposed to drown her back to sleep."

  ix

  The picnic basket had been scarlet when it was new, and had faded only a little over its long life, perhaps because so much of it had been spent tucked away in the attic. I began by hefting one of the handles. The damn thing was pretty heavy, all right; I guessed about twenty pounds. The wicker on the bottom, although tightly woven, had sagged down some. I set it back on the carpet, pushed the thin wooden carry-handles down to either side, and flipped back the lid on hinges that squeaked slightly.

  There were colored pencils, most of which had been sharpened down to stubs. And there were drawings made by a certain child prodigy well over eighty years ago. A little girl who'd fallen out of a pony-trap at the age of two and banged her head and awakened with seizures and a magical ability to draw. I knew this even though the drawing on the first page wasn't a drawing at all--not really, but this:

  I flicked it up. Beneath was this:

  After that, the pictures became pictures, growing in technique and sophistication with a speed that was beyond belief. Unless, that was, you happened to be a guy like Edgar Freemantle, who had done little more than doodle until an accident on a building site had taken his arm, crushed his skull, and nearly ended his life.

  She had drawn fields. Palms. The beach. A gigantic black face, round as a basketball, with a smiling red mouth--probably Melda the housekeeper, although this Melda looked like an overgrown child in extreme close-up. Then more animals--raccoons, a turtle, a deer, a bobcat--that were naturally sized, but walking on the Gulf or flying through the air. I found a heron, executed in perfect detail, standing on the balcony railing of the house she had grown up in. Directly below it was another watercolor of the same bird, onl
y this time it was hovering upside-down over the swimming pool. The gimlet eyes staring out of the picture were the same shade as the pool itself. She was doing what I've been doing, I thought, and my skin began to creep again. Trying to re-invent the ordinary, make it new by turning it into a dream.

  Would Dario, Jimmy, and Alice cream their jeans if they saw these? I thought there was no doubt.

  Here were two little girls--Tessie and Laura, surely--with great big pumpkin smiles that deliberately overran the edges of their faces.

  Here was a Daddy bigger than the house beside which he stood--had to be the first Heron's Roost--smoking a cigar the size of a rocket. A smoke-ring circled the moon overhead.

  Here were two girls in dark green jumpers on a dirt road with schoolbooks balanced on their heads the way some African native girls balanced their pots: Maria and Hannah, no doubt. Behind them came a line of frogs. In defiance of perspective, the frogs grew larger rather than smaller.

  Next came Elizabeth's Smiling Horses phase. There were a dozen or more. I leafed through them, then turned back to one and tapped it. "This is the one that was in the newspaper article."

  Wireman said, "Go a little deeper. You ain't seen nuthin yet."

  More horses . . . more family, rendered in pencil or charcoal or in jolly watercolors, the family members almost always with their hands linked like paperdolls . . . then a storm, the water in the swimming pool lashed into waves, the fronds of a palm pulled into ragged banners by the wind.

  There were well over a hundred pictures in all. She might only have been a child, but she had also been unbottling. Two or three more storm pictures . . . maybe the Alice that had uncovered Eastlake's treasure-trove, maybe just a big thunderstorm, it was impossible to say for sure . . . then the Gulf . . . the Gulf again, this time with flying fish the size of dolphins . . . the Gulf with pelicans that appeared to have rainbows in their mouths . . . the Gulf at sunset . . . and . . .

  I stopped, my breath caught in my throat.

  Compared with many of the others I'd gone through, this one was dead simple, just the silhouette of a ship against the dying light, caught at the tipping-point between day and dark, but its simplicity was what gave it its power. Certainly I'd thought so when I drew the same thing on my first night in Big Pink. Here was the same cable, stretched taut between the bow and what might in Elizabeth's time have been called a Marconi tower, creating a brilliant orange triangle. Here was the same upward shading of light, orange to blue. There was even the same scribbly, not-quite-careless overlay of color that made the ship--skinnier than mine had been--look like a phantom out there, trudging its way north.