by Karen Harper
“I had Heck look into her past even though you were questioning her. That Jimmie Cypress she was with can’t be her son. Maybe in tribal talk, a great-grandson is a son. Or a ‘son’ might be someone she’s taken under her wing, I don’t know.”
“Nick, it’s my job to listen carefully.” But even as she insisted, her knees went weak and she sank onto the couch. Hadn’t Ada stumbled over saying Jimmie was her son? Maybe she’d started to say grandson—or maybe great-grandson—twice.
“Look, Claire. We don’t understand all the tribal customs. Maybe Seminole women marry young and she still doesn’t look her age, that’s all. Even if I argue in court that the water is the real deal—and this is eating at me—I don’t believe it. It’s killing me not only to have to work for Ames, but to lie for him and in court where I always strive to bring out the truth. But with what you said about Ada hating Mark Stirling for more than one reason, I think we should bring her in to testify.”
“I’d feel like a traitor if she was summoned to court. She doesn’t want that, above all. I’m not implying she’s one of our suspects, though she does want to protect the fountain waters at any cost.”
“See there. A motive, not to mention the other one of her being angry about Mark Stirling’s attacks on the Seminoles rigging the games—cheating—at their casinos to get back at the whites for taking their land. You just said this so-called ‘son’ worked at one of them.”
“She’s afraid of the way you take witnesses apart.”
“Didn’t work with you in the insurance fraud case, did it, because you were telling the truth when you testified? But, sweetheart, listen,” he said, taking her shoulders in a hard grip and turning her toward him on the couch, “I think you’re getting too involved with some of the people in this case. Wait—wait—I understand, because so much is at stake here for you, me and Lexi, but you’re too protective of Ada and even Colleen Taylor. Both of those women, as well as Fin, have motives we need to probe further and maybe bring out in court.”
She pulled away from him. “I have been up close and personal with them, in a way you haven’t! I feel like their friend, not their inquisitor.”
“Big mistake. I’m just warning you—”
“Nick, we have to stick together, believe in each other on this!”
“We are. We are. It’s just that I’m a wreck over this case. I’ve always been scared for myself, taking Ames on, but with you and Lexi, it’s worse. Damn, I’d like to send you both away where you’d be safe while I take this on alone. I hate doing that bastard’s bidding! I hate going against my good instincts by promoting his products in a show trial to help and please him.”
“And I hate that we’re arguing, that you don’t trust the way I’m handling possible witnesses.”
“Or possible suspects.”
“I’d bet on Fin first, even though you found out he was with clients on his boat when that WaveRunner almost swamped us. He could have hired someone. He obviously knows lots of guys around here.”
“Stay away from Fin. And another thing that’s eating at me—can we trust Haze? He’s on Ames’s side because of the money flowing to him like—like springwater. And much as I’ve defended him in the past, that’s a reason I don’t trust him, or maybe Maggie, either. I can’t believe she’s so bitter, even vindictive, over preserving owls, however cute they are. But when Mark Stirling questioned the power of the water, she turned against him for that too. Like Ada, a double motive.”
“Mommy,” came a high voice from the doorway. “Are you guys fighting over the owls? I told Daddy him and me—”
“He and I,” Claire corrected automatically.
“Right. We should go see them after the WaveRunning ride.”
Claire turned away from Nick and went to hug Lexi. She picked her up, which was getting difficult now.
“You and Daddy are going on a WaveRunner?”
“Right. He likes them.”
Claire met Nick’s stern stare. She felt a rush of anger again, that Nick might have been right about Jace being untrustworthy. And she hated to admit it, but she probably was getting too subjective over Colleen and Ada. Maybe she should talk to Haze’s wife, Maggie, more.
Clutching Lexi to her, she could sense Nick’s thoughts again and they scared her: Could Jace be hoping to sabotage their efforts? To get Lexi all to himself? Or something more dire than that?
25
Despite their argument that night, Claire and Nick were still so exhausted from their night in the Glades that they slept in the same bed, barely touching. Back on her meds, Claire’s sleep was sound, but the first thing she thought of in the morning was Lexi’s overhearing the mention of owls last night.
Claire didn’t believe in omens, but they’d heard that owl cry in the Glades, and that reminded her she needed to talk to the all-time owl champion, Maggie. Claire not only wanted to know how she was coping but to carefully learn if she knew much about Colleen and Mark. Nick was right that Claire wanted to help Maggie, Haze and Colleen too.
She hurried out to breakfast to tell Nick what she had planned, but he was already gone. Feeling deflated, she spent some time with Lexi, then left her talking to her chicken-poxed cousin Jilly on the phone with Nita nearby. She wondered how she and Bronco were doing, but didn’t ask as she left in a rush for the Hazelton home that guarded their fountain of youth.
Today, she could use at least a swig of that youth water, she thought, as she headed down the gangway of the yacht. She ached all over and felt older than her thirty-two years.
But there was another legacy of their terrifying night in the Glades: she was now even more afraid than ever. Someone was watching, stalking them. Her skin prickled all over when she was out in the open like this. Of course, they knew that spying was Ames’s standard method of operation. But to think, in this retro, strangely charming little place that seemed so quiet and laid-back, someone could be watching, someone who had perhaps nearly drowned them and shot at them. It made her feel naked and exposed.
She quickened her steps, avoiding her usual path through the thick copse of cypress trees. Several delivery trucks were rumbling in to provision Stan’s Idle Hour and the other restaurants and bars. Taking a wider path around Ada’s home, she stayed on the main road, if you could call it that. Though she would rather have surprised Maggie, she’d phoned to be sure she was home.
“Hey, great to see you again!” Maggie called from the top of the house stairs and motioned for her to come up. When Claire joined her, she said in a rush, “I’ve been waiting for you. Haze had to get away for a while, pressure and all. The sheriff told him not to go far, and we’re scared to death an arrest is coming. He’s out fishing with a friend on the canal just along the highway, not far. Come on in. I’ve got coffee and Danishes.”
Though Claire had eaten a decent breakfast to try to stoke her energy for the day, she followed Maggie into the screened Florida room that overlooked the canal and accepted a mug of coffee. Maybe misery did love company, for Maggie looked more edgy than before. Dark circles hung under her blue eyes like half-moons. She wore no makeup, and her white-blond hair looked as if it had been combed by her fingers.
They talked at first about the owls Claire and Nick had taken Lexi to see. She didn’t share about their night ordeal in the Glades.
“So, other than working this case, how are the newlyweds?” Maggie asked. “Haze says you’re going to have a reception at the law office.”
“Yes, on Monday. We’ve been so busy that I haven’t met most of his colleagues yet.”
“Hopefully they’re all busy getting ready to help Haze if it comes to that. I’m afraid it will. Claire,” she said, leaning forward in her chair, “you two have to turn up other suspects for Mark Stirling’s murder to get Haze off, even though Nick is here to defend the youth waters too. You know darn well—and so
does the sheriff’s office, which is why he’s taking his time—that a lot of people hated Mark Stirling.”
Claire put her mug down on the coffee table and took a small notebook and pen from her purse. Usually, she liked to seem to only be listening, not recording, but she wanted Maggie to expand on what she’d just said. “Can you list them for me, so we leave no stone unturned?”
“Look, I love Ada Cypress, partly because she minds her own business and believes in the water. But even she hated Stirling’s guts for attacking the Seminole casinos as well as our fountain of youth. Then there’s Fin Taylor, because Stirling kept harping on the sharks and was going to accuse Fin of illegal takes on them—and Fin is one to fight back, believe me. Just how ambitious was Wes Ringold to get his hands on that newspaper? And, okay, I was upset Mark didn’t think the owls were endangered or worth a damn, but I had nothing to do with harming him, though, obviously, I was upset he called our youth water bogus.”
Claire actually thought it was a good sign that Maggie had included herself in the possible suspect list, but maybe she’d thought she dare not leave herself out. Before Claire could speak, a motorboat buzzed past on the canal, making so much noise for a moment that she had to repeat her next question. Time to go fishing, that is for whether Maggie knew about a possible affair between Colleen and Mark. But she hesitated to ask.
“Do you think Colleen Taylor was angry over Mark’s treatment of Fin? I never asked you if you know her well.”
Maggie smacked both palms on her knees. “Of course, I know her well! I love Colleen. After all we’re both married to Goodland year-round—ha! But she’s the turn the other cheek kind,” Maggie insisted. “You know the old saying, ‘Don’t knock over the beehive, if you want to gather honey’? That’s her motto in general, including with Mark Stirling.”
“How did that work for her? Was she able to get him to back off from her husband by being friendly with him or what?”
“More or less, I guess,” Maggie said, frowning now and almost drawling those words. If Maggie knew anything of a Colleen-Mark affair, she obviously wasn’t saying so. She raked her finger through her hair, making some strands stand even more on end. “Look, you should ask her all that. I don’t think it really worked with bulldog Stirling, but she didn’t give up. She even advertised in that rag. You know, he dared to take the name of that paper from our little owls, then did nothing for them!”
Had Maggie just changed the subject? Or, as claustrophobic a place as Goodland was, didn’t she know at least that Colleen might have done more than turn the other cheek to Mark Stirling? Were the two women friends, and Maggie was covering for her? Doubtful, with Haze’s future at stake.
Claire jolted when an obviously masculine cry of “Who? Who?” sounded through the screens of this elevated room.
Maggie jolted alert. “Oh. Oh, no. Sorry. Not an owl, for sure. Just one of my owl-watch volunteers. We owl fanatics always imitate their cry, kind of as a joke, even on phone calls, silly to outsiders I’m sure. I need to give him some money to pay for supplies—ropes to keep people away from the burrows, a portable microphone for a large, open area. I’ll have to—I have his money. Be right back.” She jumped up and hurried out.
Claire took the moment to look closer at the cluster of photos on the corner table and on the one unscreened wall. Close-ups of owls. A wedding photo of the much younger Hazeltons taken on the shore with huge waves rolling in behind. One picture of them with Fin on his fishing boat. Colleen wasn’t in it, but maybe she’d taken the picture.
She gasped. One with Clayton Ames! Had Nick ever seen that? It sat behind the larger wedding picture, or she might have seen it herself before. Smiling, the three of them in the photo stood in the underground grotto with the spring behind. It had obviously been taken with a flash camera for the rough walls were etched in shadows and all their eyes glowed red. And scribbled in the lower left-hand corner, Water, water everywhere and plenty to drink and sell. Let’s Aim High!
Ames had been here in person! Ames knew Goodland. Her hands shaking, Claire picked the frame up and slid the photo out to see if there was a date or anything written on the back of it. Nothing. As she put it back, she had to keep herself from shattering it against the wall.
Glancing out through the screen, she saw a young man not only talking but gesturing to Maggie as she gave him the envelope she’d mentioned. Although his owl cry had been close by, they were at quite a distance from the house, down along the canal. His body language suggested anger; hers, wariness, nervousness. It looked as if she was telling him to leave, get going.
Claire squinted into the morning sun to see better, then shaded her eyes. He was maybe twenty, had a scruffy beard but wore a baseball cap so she couldn’t see much of his face. Cutoffs, T-shirt, sandals despite the cool mid-October wind today. He didn’t look like a happy camper.
Finally the young man walked away, stuffing the envelope in a back pocket. He went farther down the canal, then shoved something away from a small, distant dock and mounted it.
Claire realized she had not heard a motorboat a few minutes before when he roared away on a WaveRunner. It was the same color as the one that had almost run them down at the site of Mark’s murder.
* * *
“Sure it’s partly the magic of marketing more than medicine or miracles,” Dr. Seth Shaw told Nick in his law office where he was meeting with the water men who would help him prepare for trial, and even—Ames was insisting—be called as expert witnesses to testify at it. “But the water works,” Dr. Shaw insisted.
“If so, is it because of its youth-preserving and enhancing properties or merely the belief in it, an aging population’s passion to stay young?” Nick challenged. He hated Ames controlling his plans for a defense trial almost as much as he hated the man for controlling his life.
“Look,” the other guy, Dr. Tom Anderson, older and calmer, picked up their sell-job. “Haven’t you heard that people with religious faith do better when they’re ill? If people take a useless pill but believe it will help, they get better—the placebo effect. Of course, there’s a mental, even spiritual aspect to this, but that’s all for the good too. We’re here to explain all that to you now and to return to testify later that ‘the water works.’”
“Sounds like a new promo line for the water products.”
“Just for the drinks, I hear. That motto’s too gung ho for the female cosmetic products.”
Talk about marketing pasting over or prettying up the truth, Nick thought. Both of these chemists had no doubt been bought off by Ames to parrot the party line. But he should talk, since he and Claire were under Ames’s control too.
He thought about Ada Cypress, though he didn’t mention her. Claire didn’t want Ada dragged into court to help prove the water worked, but she might be a convincing witness. Nick didn’t want to lose his soul in all this, nor Claire’s love. It was bad enough he might lose his life.
“So, if Hazelton goes to trial,” he said, “you two will leave your jobs to come from California again to testify?”
“Exactly. We’re key to all this—and understand you are too,” the younger man, who was somehow the main spokesman, said. They were both leaning forward in their chairs. They’d brought a packet of facts and figures about their tests of the water, which lay on the polished wood surface of Nick’s desk.
Seth Shaw knocked his fist there. “Let’s just say a benevolent and interested party thinks enough of us that he sent his private Learjet for us and would again, so let’s go over these facts we’ve brought you.”
Damn! Nick thought. Lexi had told Claire that Daddy had to fly to California to get some men who knew all about water but not the kind you swim in. Heck hadn’t been able to research who Jace flew for now, and Claire hadn’t yet asked him. But Ames had surely sent Jace Britten, his new pilot, to fly these guys here in that Learjet.
* * *
Claire felt really rattled when she left Maggie’s house. She had not let on she’d seen the man who had come by WaveRunner. It could mean nothing—or everything. If this was the same man who had threatened them, maybe Maggie was paying him off for that as well as for following them into the Glades and shooting at the car. But what motive could Maggie possibly have to try to scare them off this case that could mean her husband’s freedom and his life?
The message from the man on the WaveRunner had been Get Out! Stay Out! But wouldn’t Maggie want them to stay close, plan Haze’s defense? She’d just insisted she did. Unless she wanted Haze to be found guilty and sent away so the youth water fountain was hers alone. Or unless she herself was somehow guilty of Mark’s murder and would let her husband take the fall for that. She couldn’t wait to tell Nick so they could sort it out together.
Although she hadn’t planned to, Claire decided to stop to see Ada on her way back to the yacht. She saw the dugout canoe was here and the door to her place was ajar again, so she was surely home. As scared as Claire was of the woman at times, she was totally intrigued by her too. She would not stay long.
She went up the wooden stairs, noting for the first time the railing had been worn smooth by time or weather—or the touch of ageless hands. “Ada? Ada, it’s Claire!”
As she had last time, she peered through the door left ajar, but no Ada in sight. She stuck her head inside the front room. “Ada, are you here?”
On the worn worktable lay three identical shawls of Spanish moss she must have finished recently. Even from here, they looked beautiful, all in a silvery pale green, nearly the color of the underground cistern waters.
“Ada, I don’t mean to bother you,” Claire called. “I see you’ve been working.”
Even from here, Claire could also see three notes pinned to the shawls, so someone must be coming to pick them up. Her heart beat hard as she stepped inside. Oh, Maggie’s name was on one of the shawls. She touched the texture of it, soft but sturdy, and read the note in large, painstaking printing: Take care. Ada.
