One last time I tried to steer the subject back to the missing reel but gave up after listening, instead, to how Loretta’s vegetables would prosper now that the Pekingese was gone. She had never been a particularly affectionate mother, we’d never been close, but I couldn’t deny she was a first-rate gardener and loved tending her plants. First thing she did each morning was carry her coffee out to visit her collards and squash, then confirm the tomatoes were properly staked. The garden was her last call every evening, too, even on Wednesday nights when she had church.
I didn’t want to hear about the garden right now, though, and I was about to manufacture an excuse to go outside and check my boat when an excuse was provided for me. A knock came at the screen door: a little man in a suit, holding a folder under his arm. Behind him was a deputy sheriff—a woman deputy, red hair, petite, one nervous hand tapping at her holster, a name tag that read L. Tupplemeyer on her uniform.
Now what? I wondered.
• • •
“MRS. SMITH?” the man asked.
“That’s right,” I replied, not hesitating to lie. It was a way of shielding my mother from involvement. Loretta gets jumpy when policemen come around—a guilty conscience, I’ve always suspected—which has only gotten worse since her stroke. “Let’s walk outside to talk,” I suggested, and let the two follow me away from the porch.
When we were near the carport, the man put a paper into my hand and said, “You’ve been notified.” Then handed me several more sheets stapled to a yellow tag. “If you have questions, I can explain the basics or you can have your attorney contact our office. We don’t have a lot of time today, sorry—lots more stops to make.”
Deputy Tupplemeyer had parked her squad car around the bend, I noticed, midway between the house and a row of bayside cabins—Munchkinville, as I had told Mr. Chatham. The cabins had been built during the same period as the fish shacks and some weren’t in great shape—unpainted boats on blocks, cast nets hanging among stacks of wooden stone-crab traps. Apparently, Loretta wasn’t the only resident the man had plans to visit.
“Why in the world would I need an attorney?” I asked, reading what appeared to be a cover letter.
“That’s something you should ask an attorney,” he replied, which irritated me.
The letterhead read Florida Division of Historical Resources, Bureau of Archaeological Research. The first paragraph, which struck me as threatening, began You are hereby ordered to repair/replace/remove the structures and/or vegetation as listed on the pages attached. This must be done within 5 business days . . .
I flipped a page to skip ahead and looked up, my eyes moving from the little man wearing the suit to the county deputy. “This isn’t from the local zoning department,” I said. “Who are you?”
As the man told me his name, I flipped another page and soon felt my face coloring because of what came next: You are in violation of ordinances that: 1. Prohibit planting exotic vegetation. 2. Disturbing/altering property designated as archaeologically or historically important . . .
That was enough for me, no need to continue.
“I think you have the wrong address,” I said. “My family has owned this property for longer than you’ve been alive and we don’t plant anything more exotic than jasmine or bougainvillea—which are flowers, in case you don’t know, not illegal plants. Unless this is about the vegetable garden, which would be silly.”
The smug look on the man’s face told me It is about the garden.
“You can’t be serious?” I said.
The man confirmed that he was with a nod. “Unless you planted native species, a vegetable garden doesn’t belong here. In your packet, there’s a phone number for the extension agency. This island has been redesignated and the agents know it, so they’re expecting a lot of calls.”
Which made me mad enough to forget I was impersonating Loretta. “Redesignated historical—I know that. It happened more than a year ago.”
“Then you should be in compliance by now, shouldn’t you?” The man smiled.
I’m not a violent person, but I wanted to slap the smug look off his face. “This is ridiculous. My mother could have another stroke if she sees this letter. You should have better things to do than pick on invalid ladies who enjoy gardening.”
The man proved he didn’t by studying my late uncle’s truck, which was parked in the shade, then spoke to the deputy. “That tree? It’s an avocado. That wasn’t mentioned in the report, but it has to go. Avocados, mangoes—it’s the same as citrus. They’re all exotics. We should check the backyard before my next stop.”
“That tree’s a hundred years old!” I argued, which might have been true but probably wasn’t. Then asked, “Is that why she’s here? You’ve got to bring an armed deputy to protect you?”
The petite woman gave me a tough cop look that she’d probably seen in movies and spoke for the first time, her accent unmistakably Boston. “The state of Florida doesn’t want any trouble with locals. That’s why I’ve been assigned—ma’am.”
I shot her a hard look of my own and replied, “Then the state of Florida should relocate to a place that doesn’t attract hurricanes—or tourists from Massachusetts.”
It took Deputy Tupplemeyer a second to remember where she had been born. “Hey! Are you looking for trouble?”
“No,” I told her, “I’m looking for a reason not to order you off my property and I can’t think of a single one.” I indicated the neighbor’s new house, a mountain of concrete that dwarfed the poinciana and coconut palms separating our properties. “Those are the people you should be serving papers. They trucked off most of an Indian mound to build that house, then terraced the landscaping. Where was your agency then? They dumped a thousand years of pottery and artifacts somewhere—they won’t even tell the archaeologists. But no one from the government said a word! Now you’re bothering me about avocados and some pole beans? If I had either one of your jobs, I’d quit and do something I could be proud of.”
To signal I was done reading, and done with the conversation, I folded the sheath of papers but also used those few seconds to tell myself, Calm down. Right or wrong, arguing with a police officer is always a bad choice, and I didn’t want to push it too far. Plus, my mother’s garden was at stake, and Loretta, who does have her sweet moments, didn’t have much in life but tending her plants, putting up canned vegetables, and bingo.
The little man was getting nervous, a bit of sweat showing above his lip, and I expected Deputy Tupplemeyer to put me in my place with something stern. Instead, she said, “I’ve never heard of Indian mounds in Florida,” sounding cop-like and cynical but also interested.
“You’re standing on one,” I replied. “Pyramids made of shell before the Spaniards arrived.”
The deputy turned to the little man. “She’s kidding, right? I thought they were hills.”
He was remarking on the subject’s unimportance when his phone buzzed, which allowed the deputy to ask me a couple more questions before explaining, “I spent two weeks in Guatemala. The ruins there. Mayan—it was for a course I was taking. Copán, too. Three weeks, that trip, then a month when I was in college.” She had her hands on her hips, looking at the topography, maybe trying to imagine if what I’d told her was possible.
I asked, “East-west pyramids, is that the way the Maya built their cities?”
“You’d have to see for yourself to understand the attraction,” she replied as if mishearing. But then added, “Yeah, the Maya were astronomers.”
“Same with the people here,” I said, then pointed to a distant island. “See the high trees? That’s the western pyramid. The first day of spring, the sun sets right over it. We’re standing on the eastern pyramid—what’s left of it anyway. Farther east, there’re three burial mounds.”
The deputy looked at the man, who was putting his phone away, then at the house next door, her eyes
taking in the terraced lawn, construction residue, insulation, broken stringers stacked by the road. The tracks of a bulldozer, too, used to flatten the mound and load dump trucks that had waited in a line. Then she asked him, “How could they get away with something like that?”
The man shook his head, getting more nervous by the second. “Permits and variances don’t go through my department,” he responded, which was an attempt to distance himself, but it also confirmed the truth as far as the deputy was concerned.
“A thousand years old,” she said, thinking about it.
“Some artifacts, they’ve dated back four or five thousand years,” I told her.
“Here?”
“Right where we’re standing, pottery and shell tools—the artifacts the neighbors didn’t have hauled off to the dump, or wherever they took it. About fifteen or twenty tons of shell mound, just disappeared.”
“There’s something very wrong about that,” Deputy Tupplemeyer told the little man. Then had to show her authority over me by adding, “You shouldn’t be digging a garden either. Like the law says. Not if this is an archaeological site.”
I was explaining that my grandfather had raised pineapples on the plot where vegetables now grew, so it was too late to apologize, we couldn’t go back in time, but we had drawn the line at bulldozing history. That’s when I noticed that the neighbor woman had come outside and was watching. Alice Candor was her name, a medical doctor, local gossip claimed. She had a dog leash in one hand and was using the other to talk on a cell phone. A tall woman, bulky but not obese, with whom I’d never spoken but had seen a few times, distinctive in her appearance, always wearing dark baggy clothes. Often caftans, and she liked scarves. She was dressed that way now, whispering into the phone and watching, until she realized I’d spotted her, then spun her back to me.
That’s when a little light went off in my head. “That’s who complained about the garden, isn’t it? The new neighbors reported us, that’s why you’re here.”
“Who?” the deputy asked, then became official. “Doesn’t matter who did it, the names are confidential.”
The man said, “Of course they are,” but gave it all away when the neighbor woman suddenly knelt to retrieve something off the ground, froze for an instant, then bolted away, shrieking, her screams so piercing they spooked crows from the trees.
The man panicked and began to jog after her, calling, “Something must have bit her! Dr. Candor’s hurt!”
No, the doctor had found her missing Pekingese.
When I returned to the house to check on Loretta, she was pacing and looked upset, but it wasn’t because of the neighbor’s shrieking. It was because she couldn’t locate a childhood friend and bingo partner of hers, Rosanna Helms, whom everyone called Pinky. Of special concern was that Mrs. Helms’s answering machine didn’t come on, and three of her other bingo partners hadn’t answered the telephone either.
“Second day in a row Pinky didn’t call,” my mother said, “but yesterday, at least, her damn machine answered!”
At the time, of course, I had no reason to suspect that Mrs. Helms had been given our family antiques or to fear that the woman had been murdered. Like most adult daughters, I assumed my mother’s anxiety was baseless, which is why I treated her with the same gentle impatience she had shown me as a little girl. “You’re worried for no reason, please calm down,” I told her.
“Something’s wrong, I know it,” Loretta insisted, while I steered her toward the recliner. Which caused me to remark that her day nurse, Mrs. Terwilliger, would soon return, so why not swallow her five p.m. meds a little early?
“It’ll settle your nerves,” I added.
My mother pursed her lips to refuse my advice. “Pinky and me talk every afternoon, you know that. Especially today—she was expecting a new wig in the mail.”
“Maybe she forgot,” I said.
“Nope! When the game shows are over, that phone rings. She never missed a day until yesterday. Then I always call Becky Darwin and Jody and Jody calls Epsey Hendry and what’s-her-name, the woman I can’t stand. Now they’ve all disappeared!”
“All five of your friends?”
“What’s-her-name is a damn gossip, not a friend. It’s the other four I’m worried about.”
“Loretta, you’re upsetting yourself for no reason.”
Angry and near tears, my mother wailed, “Pinky’s hurt, maybe dying—that’s not cause to be upset? Hannah Smith, you listen to me! Just a few minutes ago, in my mind, I heard her crying for help! At least drive to the old Helms place and check.”
The poor woman looked frantic, rusty hair hanging in strands over her face and housecoat, her hands balled into pale, knobby fists. The sight of her so frail and frightened squeezed at the heart. My mother had once been sharp and sure and bullheaded, but now the years and a brain embolism had sapped the best part of her away. It had made her so childlike, I wanted to hug her close to let her know she was safe and protected. So that’s exactly what I did before returning with a pillow and a fresh glass of sweet tea, then apologized to her because it was the right thing to do. It was also a way of explaining the cries for help she’d heard.
“I was wrong to doubt you about that Pekingese, Mamma. What you told me was true about the owl. Just now, the neighbor lady found what was left—not far from the oak grove, like you said. That’s what you heard, not Pinky. The woman started screaming. There’s a deputy sheriff trying to calm her right now.”
Loretta’s eyes flashed for an instant, a triumphant look, which I expected, but I didn’t expect her to reply, “Think I don’t know that? I was watching from the porch when that evil bitch found the collar, then picked up a piece of his tail or whatever it was she slung into the bushes. Her bawling has nothing to do with Pinky.” Then again pleaded, “Hannah, please drive me so we can check. Pinky might be dying right now!”
I sighed, unsure if I should take Loretta seriously. There were times, as a girl, when I’d wondered if my mother was a mind reader. Even during my teenage years, Loretta’s intuition had been maddeningly accurate—although often aided by her snoopy behavior.
The grandfather clock opposite the fireplace was tocking solemnly. It read 4:20 p.m., which meant it was nearly five. At sunset, which was around eight, I had a date with the biologist, whom I’d allowed myself to phone only twice since leaving his bedroom in the early hours of the morning. Sunset was less than three hours away, and I still had to finish some work in my late Uncle Jake’s office before I showered, changed, and then boated across to Sanibel Island. Marion Ford lived there in an old stilthouse next to Dinkin’s Bay Marina, where, every Friday night, there is a party. I didn’t want to be late, nor did I want to give Ford the impression I was a slave to the whims of my addled mother. What kind of man would tolerate such a partner?
What to do?
“Lord A’mighty,” Loretta gasped, breaking into my thoughts. “You’re in love with that fish doctor! That’s why you’re refusing to help poor Pinky!”
“I am not!” I shot back and instantly regretted my denial. It invited bad luck, as lying often does, and somehow cheapened the good feeling inside me. But I wasn’t going to allow my mother to poke around in my private thoughts without a battle, so I stuck by the lie, saying, “What’s Pinky’s number? If she doesn’t answer, I’ll take the truck and knock on her door. But you’re staying right here. Mrs. Terwilliger just pulled into the drive.”
The keys to the truck, though, were gone from the storage shed, which was my latest hiding spot.
“Where are they, Loretta?” I demanded, which should have put my mother in a difficult position. If I was to check on her friend, she would have to admit she had been sneaking out and driving illegally or, at the very least, letting someone chauffeur her into town.
“How would I know?” my mother replied with some heat. “That poor little Thurloe boy is the one I let
use the truck when he needs it. Ask him.”
“You’re making up another story,” I said, because it couldn’t be true. There was nothing “little” about Levi Thurloe. The man was the size of a field hand and older than me, but his development had been stunted by a fever in infancy or some accident. Local gossip varied. Levi walked everywhere, didn’t even own a bike. I’d seen him miles from the island, going to or coming from the mainland, head down, earbuds always plugged into his ears, using music to block the outside world. Walkin’ Levi, locals called him—or worse. He was a solitary young man, commonly seen on the roads, but he seldom spoke so was the target of jokes and nasty rumors that I, at least, didn’t find entertaining. More than once, as a girl, I had backed down some taunting bully, then been rewarded with Levi’s shy, “Thank you, miz.” The man was harmless in my opinion, but a poor choice when it came to loaning the family pickup truck.
“Levi doesn’t know how to drive,” I reminded my mother.
“People say the same thing about me!” Loretta countered. “He’s working for the new neighbors as a handyman, and I can’t say no to a half-wit who needs transportation. If you want the keys, find Levi—don’t believe he’s as dumb as some say. And for god’s sake, hurry up!”
Luckily, I checked the truck’s ignition before setting off on my search. The keys were there. So was Levi Thurloe. He was sitting on the passenger side, a big arm hooked out the open window as if already enjoying the ride. His sad, slow eyes stared straight ahead to avoid looking at me when I climbed in.
Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) Page 3
