“I don’t doubt it.” She wasn’t sure if he was being threatening or if he had faith in her integrity.
“Tullie said you were going up in a helicopter.”
“Yep, going nest spotting. It’s egg harvest time.”
Seeing the anticipation on his face was something. “You obviously like it.”
“I like anything that takes me out there.” He nodded toward the marsh. “Especially when it has something to do with gators. Today I map the nests and tonight I go out and harvest the eggs. There’s nothing like uncovering a nest and discovering it’s full of beautiful, white eggs. It’s like opening a treasure chest every time, never knowing what’s going to be inside.” He did love what he did; she could tell by the way his voice had changed from the usual reserved tone to the excitement of a boy’s on Christmas morning. The passion in his voice tickled through her stomach. Few of the men she knew had that kind of passion for their jobs. Or for anything.
“Do you take all of the eggs?”
“Yep. Alligators lay about thirty-five to forty eggs in one nest, but few live long enough to grow to three feet. At the farm, ninety-five percent of the eggs produce viable gators. My job is to survey the alligator population for both Macgregor properties and a few other properties we’ve arranged lease deals with. I map out the nests, take the eggs, and then monitor hatch rates. When the gators reach a survivable age, some are returned to the property to compensate for the ones that would have survived in the wild. It’s good for the environment, good for the economy, and good for people who like alligator leather.”
Course, it was good for the Macgregors, too, but he was modest enough not to mention that.
“I’ll bet you would have gotten into the park service if they weren’t the enemy.”
Locals resented the government’s intrusion into their livelihoods. When the national park was established in 1947, many gladesmen lost their fishing and hunting grounds. Not that the government could keep the natives from continuing to pursue their livelihoods. Laws only made it more challenging. Zelwig Macgregor was a legendary poacher and local hero.
Zell shook his head. “That’s why I went to the University of Georgia instead of Florida. Up there they teach you how to preserve nature and profit from it.”
“Now that you’re back, I bet you never leave Cypress.”
Zell obviously took that as a slam and affected a hick accent. “Wail now, every now and then they let me out of here. Course, those boys up in Tallahassee don’t much like it when I show up in water-logged sneakers with my suit.”
“I didn’t mean—you go up to Tallahassee?”
He dropped the inflection. “To lobby for industry issues. They even let me sit on some committees for things like water conservation…long as I don’t pick my nose and scratch my ass.”
She gave him a playful shove before realizing what she was doing. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m impressed, really.”
“Didn’t tell you to impress you.” He closed up his toolbox. After setting it beneath the cleaning shelf ledge, he grabbed up the alligator and gave it a look over. “Nice specimen. It’s still got its stripes. They lose them when they become adults.” He carried it under his arm and indicated that she join him as he started down the boardwalk.
She walked beside him, amazed that they had shared a conversation and were now walking in companionable silence. Amazed more that she liked being with him. What was going on here?
“You really love those creatures, don’t you?” she asked.
He held out the alligator. “How can anyone not like them, or at least respect them? First, the alligator is the only animal where every aspect of their ecology is saleable. Nothing goes to waste. Second, this is the oldest living reptile, the closest we’ll get to seeing a dinosaur. He’s an engineering marvel, a study in survivability.” He indicated the bumps on the back of the gator. “These scutes here are made of bone, and his hide is tougher than anything. He blends into both the water and land and moves around in either environment with ease. He’s a killing machine from head to toe. He can use his tail as a weapon if someone grabs hold of it. Had ’em knock me on my butt a few times with their tails.”
He swung it around so that its mouth faced her. “You’re looking at a couple thousand pounds of biting power with up to eighty teeth that regenerate if needed. When he’s submerged, only his nostrils and eyes are above water. They’re exciting to hunt and they’re exciting to preserve. There’s a primitive power in hooking a ten-foot gator that could tear you apart. There’s a different kind of feeling in setting a few four-footers free in the swamp to balance out the population, especially when you saw them come out of their shells.”
He’d obviously noticed Kim backing up as he gestured with the gator. He didn’t just love what he did; he was totally, completely into it.
“Why are you so afraid of gators, anyway?” he asked, pulling the gator back. “I remember we couldn’t even get you to walk into the gator houses to look at the babies.”
She didn’t want to tell him about the old woman who lost her arm, so she shrugged. “All those teeth are reason enough.”
He waved that away. “Gators rarely attack humans unless they’re threatened, a mama gator’s babies are threatened, or they’re really, really hungry.”
“That’s comforting.” She met his gaze. “Well, I’d better get going.”
“I asked Smitty to walk you out to your car after the bar closes. Don’t be sassy and all tough-like and tell him not to.”
That uneasy thrum returned to her insides. She thought about telling him what had happened last night but decided not to. She couldn’t prove it was them. “Do you think they’ll cause trouble?”
“It’s like being around a gator. It might hiss. It might sit there and watch you. Or it might attack.”
“I’ve got tear gas.”
“Your wits are your best weapon. If they knock it out of your hand, it’s not going to do you a whole lot of good. Ole Smitty, he’s not going to be able to keep two ornery buttheads from causing trouble, but he’s a start. Mind yourself while you’re here.”
It was a warning, but she wondered if his motive was only to help her. “Are you trying to scare me into leaving town?”
He paused when they reached the covered entry for his home. “Be the best thing for you. Some folks’ll be happy when you head on out.”
“Including you,” she said and held her breath waiting for his answer.
“Including me.” He set the gator down. It looked as though it was striding away from the door. “I want you to leave, yeah, but for different reasons altogether.”
She swallowed hard. “And they are?”
“One, for what you did to my family.”
“And the second?”
Tullie walked around the curved pathway. “Oscar’s getting kinda hot.”
She looked at Zell, waiting for his answer.
“You be careful,” he said in his typical non-answer way.
Why did every encounter with Zell leave her feeling…well, leave her feeling? Annoyance and admiration and yes, even attraction tangled inside her. She felt a little tender at his blunt honesty. “Tullie, you need a ride back to the house?”
Kim felt some relief when Tullie displayed the typical coyness of a young girl. She batted her eyes at her uncle and said, “Unless he’s gonna take me with him in the ’copter?”
He jerked his head toward the house. “Make us some sammiches while I take a shower. We’ve got to head out shortly.” With a squeal, Tullie raced into the house, leaving them facing each other again.
“Sammiches,” she said with a grin. “I haven’t heard that word since I left town.” She let her smile fade. “Funny the things you miss. You’re not going to tell me, are you? The second reason, I mean.”
Before he disappeared into the house, he said, “We’ll leave it at the family thing. That’s enough, don’t you think?”
Zell had seen the flicker of hurt in
Kim’s eyes when he’d said he wanted her to leave. Telling her why wouldn’t have helped any so he’d left it at that. The first problem was he liked her. It was a weird tangle of sexual interest and something else he didn’t want to examine too closely. Her coming there to apologize had notched her up on his scale of respect big time. He remembered how hard it was to wrangle an apology out of her. It had taken balls to come on Macgregor property and admit she’d made a mistake. Just like it had for her to ask him to let Smitty continue on at the bar. Damn, he really didn’t want to respect her.
The second problem was she was inadvertently putting him in a bad place. Defending her meant opposing his family, at least that’s the way they’d see it. He didn’t blame them. On the other hand, he couldn’t stand by and let someone hurt her. The sooner she left town, the better.
“Sammiches are ready,” Tullie said when he stepped into the blessedly cool house.
“Hold on while I take a shower.” He grabbed the phone on his way upstairs. When Shar answered, he said, “Is it all right if Tullie goes up with me?”
“No, it is not. That little traitor needs to get her butt right home. I suppose you saw Kim.”
“She went to the house?”
“Yeah, asking after you. Daddy told her what for, and she left. But our little Tullie offered to take her to you. That’s what happened, wasn’t it?”
Talk about getting in the middle of things. Damn, he hated conflict. He started the shower to mask his conversation from Tullie. “She had the feeling. You know how tore up she was about Elva dying after having a similar premonition. She was right about that, you know. She needed to see if Kim was the woman she’d seen.” He thought it was strange, though, that Tullie “saw” Kim with shorter hair than she had.
“You can’t believe that garbage.”
“Doesn’t matter whether I do or not. I respect that she does and so should you. Which reminds me, if I ever hear again that you talked about smoking pot while you were pregnant and that’s why Tullie’s strange, I’m going to whop your behind.”
“I didn’t say that to her.”
“Well, she heard you anyway. Just what a little girl wants to hear from her mama. Made her feel real good.”
“Dammit, Zell, stop making me feel bad. I can’t help it if she creeps around listening to adult conversations. All right, all right, I’ll be careful. Aw, why couldn’t I have had a normal kid?”
“That’s just what I’m talking about. You shouldn’t even be having thoughts like that. She’s your kid. You love her no matter what. Cut her some slack and let her come up with me. And don’t give her a hard time about bringing Kim here. Don’t drag her into family grudges.”
“That’s what we had to grow up with.”
“Right, and it was bad enough for us. Let it go.”
“Cause you’re so smart about raising kids. You’re gonna be a bachelor like Marvin and Dewayne.”
Zell thought of the odd brothers who were their cousins. In their late thirties, they had never married, and they’d lived together since moving out of the house. They were content with their hunting dogs, homemade beer brewing contraptions, and each other. At the rate he was going, he might end up a bachelor, alone with his stuffed alligator. Women were a fun addition to his life, but he didn’t need someone else to take care of. Besides, no woman had ever passed his alligator test. Course, he’d never had a woman give him an alligator, and that was a fact. “Can Tullie come or what?”
“All right, she can go. Just don’t lecture me anymore. What did Kim want, anyway? She’s not still there, is she?”
“No. She apologized for kicking me out of the bar last night. No big deal.” He thought about her holding that alligator out to him and stumbling through her apology.
Shar huffed. “The sooner that woman leaves town, the better.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Kim ran a few errands before heading to Southern Comfort. Smitty said he would open up for lunch. Saturdays were slow and leisurely in Cypress. What a difference from Tallahassee where you had to plan your errands strategically to account for traffic flow. Where no one knew your name or business. Where most people hadn’t seen you grow up. Of course, she’d also grown accustomed to all-night grocery stores, a variety of restaurants, and Blockbuster around the corner. Still, she’d never felt as though she belonged there.
She didn’t belong here anymore either. On the upside, neither the teller at the bank nor the clerk at the gas station was rude to her. A woman at Tiger’s Grocery Store had even welcomed her back. That in itself was cause for celebration. “See, Kim, everybody doesn’t hate you.”
Oscar tilted his head in agreement. “Course, you don’t hate me. I feed you. You’re easy. Hopefully someone nice will call and offer you a home.”
The pig looked away as though he knew what she’d said. Maybe she’d stipulate that he went with the bar. Unfortunately, the thought of selling the bar made her feel even worse.
“Elva, if you want me to stay, give me a sign.”
When she pulled up to Southern Comfort, broken bits of glass winked on the gravel parking lot. Someone had broken the front windows and smashed the neon lights. She felt as though she’d been beaten up instead of the bar. She involuntarily reached over and stroked Oscar’s head, though she wasn’t sure if it was out of protectiveness for him or comfort for her.
She parked next to the three trucks that were parked far from the glass and took in the damage again. They’d wanted to make a statement—Leave. Her eyes stung as she walked into the bar that was lighter than usual with the sun streaming in the front windows. Nothing inside had been touched.
Smitty was talking to the two tables’ worth of people. When he saw her, he ambled over.
“What happened to the windows?” she asked after giving her customers a welcome smile.
“The what?”
“Windows?” Was he deaf?
“Winders, young’un. Don’t you forget where you came from.”
She’d forgotten winders. “Yes, sir. What happened?”
He shrugged. “They were like that when I showed up. Called the sheriff’s substation and they sent a man over. He took pictures and the rocks that made the mess, but didn’t have much idea who it was.”
The list of suspects was too large to contemplate. “I’m going over to the marina and see if anyone over there saw something.”
“Already did that. Tubbs, the guy that owns it now, couldn’t say whether your winders were okay this morning when he came in or not. All those stacked boats block the view.”
She went into the storage closet and came out with an old hammer and a tape measure. Smitty helped as she measured the openings.
“I’ll be back,” she said a few minutes later.
“Where you going?”
“I’ve got to fix those winders.”
He scratched his grizzled hair. “Aren’t you gonna cry or stamp your foot or something?”
“What good would it do except give folks something to gossip about? Is that what Elva would have done?”
“Course not.”
“I’m more like my grandma than my mom, thank gawd. I’ll be back.”
He handed her his keys. “Take my truck. You’ll need it for the wood.”
Half an hour later, she returned from the hardware store with sheets of plywood and a box of nails. The clerk promised he’d rush her order of replacement glass. She hauled the ladder out front. Smitty had already cleaned up a lot of the glass. She was going to double his pay for the night just for dealing with that.
He came out after her few customers left. “How’s it coming, young’un?”
“Fine and dandy.” Miserable and hot, drenched in sweat and swatting away flies. She pounded in the last nail on that window and turned to him. “You have any idea who did this?”
“No use pointing fingers unless you’re sure.”
She nodded because he was right and otherwise she might just cuss for the hell of i
t. Maybe he could help with her other quest. “Who was Elva talking to about selling the bar?”
“Who wasn’t she talking to? Elva was always yammering about selling, it was getting too much for her, she was tired of working long hours, cranky customers, blah, blah, blah. But she’d never sell. She wanted you to have it.”
She sat down on one of the ladder steps. “I don’t know what to do with this place, Smitty. I feel like I’d be doing her wrong by selling.”
“You would.”
She winced at his blunt honesty. “But keeping it means staying, and some people don’t seem too happy with me being here temporarily, much less permanently.” She nodded toward the window she’d just covered. “Someone tried to run me off the road the other night. That was fun.”
Smitty’s expression instantly looked concerned. “What? Are you sure it wasn’t a drunk?”
She was already shaking her head before he’d even finished the sentence. “No, this was deliberate. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the make or inside the cab.” She scrubbed her fingers through her damp hair. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Sounds like you need to talk to the Sage. Even the mayor talks to Zell. One time he settled a dispute between two fighting dogs. I swear he talked sense right into ’em.”
“I’m not talking to Zell. He could even be the one trying to buy the bar. Maybe orchestrating all this to make his point.”
He snorted. “Zell, take up vandalism pranks? Not hardly. Besides, he owns ten percent of it anyway.”
“What?” Just when she was chiding herself for suspecting Zell, those words yanked her out of thoughts. “He owns ten percent of Southern Comfort?”
“According to his and Elva’s agreement. He didn’t want her to, but she insisted on putting up ten percent as collateral for the loan.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose where a headache was about to settle in. She hadn’t had a chance to read the loan agreement yet. “It’s like circumstances are burying me deeper in the muck, keeping me here in town. On the other hand, most folks want me out of here, the sooner the better. You’ll think this is silly, but I asked Elva for a sign about staying when I pulled in here and this is what I got.” She gestured to the windows. “I don’t know what to do.”
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