Ron Base - Tree Callister 02 - The Sanibel Sunset Detective Returns

by Ron Base

  “Anyway, Chasen’s is closing for the night—back then they rolled up the streets in Beverly Hills at eleven o’clock. Maybe they still do. So Joan suggests I come back to her place for a nightcap. That’s what you had in those days. Not a drink. A nightcap.

  “We drive into the Hills to Joan’s place. It’s dark and we go inside, and she doesn’t turn on any lights. She excuses herself, and I’m left alone, kind of stumbling around in the dark, wondering what’s going to happen. Time goes by, and there’s no sign of Joan, and I’m starting to get a little worried. Eventually, I open the door I had seen her disappear through, and I find myself in a sitting room. There’s a fire burning in this huge fireplace even though it’s summer. Lying in front of the fireplace on a fur rug is Joan Crawford—naked. She looks at me, smiles, and says, ‘What took you so long?’”

  The small circle surrounding Rex chuckled and applauded. Rex beamed. Rex in his element, Tree reflected, lost in the vast palace of his past, rediscovering its nooks and crannies, luxuriating in its warm afterglow. Who could blame him? In the past, you were always the star; you always made the right move, ended up on the fur rug in front of the fireplace with the famous woman.

  Only the present let you down. No wonder the older you got, the more you tended to retreat into your past, arranging it into wonderfully recalled anecdotes. He did the same thing, just not tonight. Tonight he had characters named Slippery on his trail and beautiful women with opaque eyes and steely determination handing him envelopes stuffed with cash. No time for the past with a present like this.

  Not far away, Ray Dayton leaned next to Freddie. He’d had what the Ray Man liked to call “a couple of drinks.” That was not a good thing, particularly when Mrs. Ray wasn’t present, as she wasn’t this evening. Ray had his eyes on Kendra who had just entered on Chris’s arm. She wore a plain white blouse strategically unbuttoned to remind interested parties of the two reasons she had been chosen as a Playboy magazine Playmate. It wasn’t just the Ray Man’s eyes, either. Everyone in the bar watched her hungrily.

  “I can think a lot more about process and planning as soon as I get rid of the house,” Ray said to Freddie.

  “The place on Woodring Road,” Freddie said.

  “I never should have bought it,” Ray said.

  “I told you not to.”

  “Now if I sell the damned thing, I take a loss. I hate that. I hate losing at anything.”

  Kendra came over and pecked Tree on the cheek and said, “Papa Tree.” She glanced at the Ray Man who immediately looked nervous.

  She grinned at him until Freddie made introductions. “So you’re Freddie’s boss,” Kendra said. She did not take her eyes off him.

  “I’m not sure,” Ray said. “Someone once said power is something you have until you try to use it. With Freddie, I’m discovering how true that is.”

  Everyone laughed,

  “I’m going to the little girls’ room,” Kendra said.

  Freddie came and stood beside Tree. “What was that all about?”

  “What?”

  “Kendra and Ray.”

  “It’s Friday night. The Ray Man is being the Ray Man.”

  “It felt as though they knew one another.”

  “How could they?” Tree said. “She’s never been down here before.”

  “Funny, that’s all,” Freddie said.

  He watched Rex in action and smiled fondly.

  “What are you thinking?” Freddie asked.

  “I was thinking about how many times I’ve heard Rex tell the Joan Crawford story.”

  “Is it true?”

  “As true as the Rita Hayworth story.”

  “There’s a Rita Hayworth story?”

  “He had an affair with her in Rome. The older Rita, mind you. The Rita suffering early signs of dementia.”

  “Quite the stud for the older broads in his day, our Rex,” Freddie said.

  Tree followed her gaze to where Kendra had begun to dance with Ray Dayton.

  “That was fast,” Tree said.

  “You see? They do know one another.”

  “That’s impossible,” Tree said.

  The song ended. Freddie looked relieved, and then tensed again as Ray and Kendra remained in place. The keyboard player started on “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” Kendra drifted into Ray Dayton’s arms. Tree looked around for Chris, but couldn’t see him.

  “Let’s dance,” Freddie said. It came out like a marching order.

  “Because I am the wind beneath your wings?”

  “I want to keep an eye on Ray.”

  “In case he starts to tear Kendra’s clothes off?”

  “He’s like all men,” Freddie said.

  “Weak?”

  “And stupid where women are concerned. Speaking of which, how are you doing with Brand Traven?”

  “It’s his wife I’m concerned about.”

  Freddie raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “Now she thinks her husband is trying to kill her.”

  “She told you this?”

  “At lunch.”

  “I thought she suspected he was having an affair.”

  “That was yesterday. Today, he’s going to kill her.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, there is not a whole lot of evidence he is having an affair.”

  “What makes Elizabeth so sure he’s trying to kill her?”

  “She doesn’t say, but she wants me out there watching him.”

  “I don’t trust her,” Freddie said. “And you are far too enamored of her.”

  “Enamored? There’s a word I haven’t heard for a while.”

  “I’m an old-fashioned girl,” Freddie said.

  “And I am not, as you say, enamored of her.”

  Freddie gave him a look before becoming distracted by the sight of Ray moving Kendra awkwardly around. They looked like they were at a country dance in a John Ford western. Kendra giggled at something Ray said. His face reddened.

  “Good grief,” Freddie said. “He’s blushing.”

  “The power of Kendra,” Tree said.

  “The Wind Beneath My Wings” ended. Kendra gave the Ray Man one of her two hundred thousand watt smiles and planted a sisterly kiss on his cheek. Except Tree doubted many men would consider a kiss from Kendra “sisterly.”

  He led Freddie back toward the bar. Chris, glass in hand, threw his free arm around his father. “Dad,” he said with a crooked grin.

  In the background, Tree heard Rex Baxter say, “Did you see To Hell And Back? The Audie Murphy story? I was in that with Audie.”

  Another voice said, “Who’s Audie Murphy?”

  Exactly, thought Tree. That was the problem with old stories in this new world. No one knew who you were talking about.

  “Dad, I think I really screwed up.” Chris stood in front of him, his face flushed and anxious.

  “What do you mean? What did you screw up, Chris?”

  “Everything,” Chris said. “Every damned thing imaginable.”

  Kendra materialized beside her husband, wrapping a possessive arm around his waist. “Time to go home, baby boy.”

  Chris managed another lopsided grin. “I think my beautiful wife wants me to keep my big mouth shut. Isn’t that right, honey? Isn’t that what you’d like me to do?”

  “What I’d like you to do is to stop drinking and get a good night’s sleep.” Kendra spoke in a reasonable voice, but it contained a warning edge.

  “If I keep talking I’m just going to get us in trouble, aren’t I?”

  Kendra gave Tree an exasperated look. “Maybe you can do something with him, Papa Tree. I certainly can’t.”

  “We’re all tired, Chris,” Tree said to his son. “It’s time to go home.”

  “Sure, sure,” Chris said. “Let’s go home. Let’s be a big happy family together. Happy, happy family.”

  Yes, they could be that, all right, Tree thought.

  Except they weren’t.

  11r />
  Monday, Tree spent much of the morning outside the Traven mansion wondering if Brand was home.

  Then about eleven o’clock his Escalade shot onto Captiva Drive, moving so fast it startled Tree. Tree got the Beetle started and went after him.

  Traven slowed coming off Sanibel Island and then picked up speed once he was on the causeway. Off the causeway, he turned left onto McGregor Boulevard and followed it until it became Tamiami Trail.

  Then Traven really put the pedal to the metal as he headed north. Tree pressed the Beetle forward, but the little car didn’t respond well. Tree could hardly blame the Beetle. It was used to puttering around Sanibel and Captiva, not being forced to race along a freeway at top speed.

  Traven swept ahead exhibiting the same aggressive tendencies he must have brought to the operation of his media empire. Tree had not seen that exuberance until now; life as just another convict at Coleman prison had made him seem somehow diminished.

  Here was the real Brand, working at full speed, sweeping over the wide Caloosahatchee and Peace rivers, past Punta Gorda, not pausing at Port Charlotte to gaze at the gulf islands but turning north on I-75, hardly ever leaving the passing lane or taking his foot off the gas pedal, impatient, a force of nature on the move.

  Tree thought he might stop at Sarasota, but he didn’t even slow down. Perhaps Tampa, “a great city for twenty-somethings.” Where had he read that? Travern didn’t fit the description, however, and so on he went, continuing his flight north, turning inland, passing Wesley Chapel, and then crossing the causeways at Moody Lake and McClendon Lake.

  The initial adrenalin-producing high induced by Traven’s first real movement began to wear off and Tree found the beating sun and the flat, unchanging landscape were making him drowsy. He bounced up and down on the seat, snapped his fingers, and turned up the volume of the radio so that Roy Orbison filled the car with “Pretty Woman.”

  Suddenly, it struck him where Traven was headed. That woke him up. It couldn’t be. Why would he be driving to Coleman Correctional, the place from which he so recently had been released? It didn’t make sense.

  But as Traven swung off the turnpike onto Country Road 470 and then accelerated onto Highway 310, it became apparent that’s exactly where he was headed.

  He whipped past the Sumterville Cemetery, making a hard right in a cloud of dust and gravel onto County Road 470. The sprawling white smudge of Coleman Correctional popped into view.

  Tree watched Traven turn onto NE Terrace, the road leading to the complex, and decided he would almost certainly be noticed if he followed him.

  He pulled off beneath a grove of trees not far from a sign warning that there was no trespassing on prison property.

  The trees provided little protection from the heat. Tree feared the Beetle’s engine would overheat, and so he shut it off. Even with the windows down, he could hardly breathe. He got out and went over and slumped under a tree. He caught the merciful whisper of a breeze. That was better. He stretched out, his back braced against the trunk. Just for a moment, he thought. Just for a moment, I’ll close my eyes.

  ________

  He jerked awake, smacking his lips, sitting up. How long had he been out?

  He looked at his watch. It was past two. He had been asleep for at least fifteen minutes, time enough for Traven to have driven away.

  Damn! What kind of detective was he, anyway? The stupid, sleepy kind, apparently.

  Tree jumped to his feet just as Traven’s Escalade arrived at the intersection. He barely paused before veering onto 470, headed back the way he had come.

  Someone was beside him. Brand Traven had picked up a passenger at Coleman Correctional.

  12

  Traven arrived back in Fort Myers at five o’clock. Instead of going straight to Sanibel Island, however, he took San Carlos Boulevard and crossed the bridge to Fort Myers Beach.

  He came along Estero as far as the Lani Kai Resort, a massive aqua green edifice with a fading American flag painted above a mural of a waterfall and tropical palms.

  Traven maneuvered the Escalade up a ramp beneath a portico. Tree saw the passenger get out carrying a black suitcase. He walked toward a covered walkway.

  Tree drove across the street and found a parking spot. By the time he ran back to the hotel, the Escalade was gone.

  Native girls in grass skirts swayed across a mural on either side of the walkway. Halfway along, a staircase led up to the lobby.

  Traven’s passenger was at the reception desk with his back to Tree talking to the female receptionist. The suitcase was at his feet. The passenger was African American, large and well-muscled in a rumpled dark suit that looked out of place at the Lani Kai.

  Not wanting to hang around and attract attention, Tree went back down to the walkway. A red-shirted security guard eyed him suspiciously: old guy in this hotel? What was that all about?

  Tree was debating what to do when Traven’s passenger abruptly appeared in the walkway and headed toward the beach. An outside bar area was jammed with muscular young guys, bare-chested, drinking beer as they cheered a quartet of young women in string bikinis, dancing on pushed-together picnic tables.

  The amplified voice of a master of ceremonies announced that voting was about to commence for finalists in the booty shaking contest. Tree kept his eye on the passenger as he leaned an elbow against the bar. He seemed as out of place here as, well, as Tree.

  Traven’s passenger ordered a beer. When the bartender brought it, the passenger threw dollar bills on the bar and then tilted his head back and took a long swallow, drinking straight from the can. It looked as though it had been a long time since he’d had a beer.

  Tree turned to face the broad back of a teenager with a shaved head and a mass of tattooed snakes weaving around a large skull emblazoned with “Survival of the Sickest.” Wait till you turn sixty, Tree thought. You may regret the day you had that done.

  The crowd hollered its approval as one of the young women on the picnic tables worked herself into an impressive frenzy as she demonstrated why they called it booty shaking.

  When Tree pulled his eyes away to search for Traven’s passenger, he had disappeared. Tree edged around the crowd and then turned to scan the beach just as a couple walked hand in hand around a golf cart advertising dolphin tours and wave runner rentals.

  Tree recognized Ray Dayton first, his white linen shirt open to the waist to show off a sunburned chest.

  Kendra Callister, the woman whose hand he held, wore sunglasses and a tank top. The sunglasses were her attempt at disguise. The tank top was the evidence of the disguise’s failure.

  13

  Tree instinctively stepped back, right into the teenager with the snakes and skull tattoos. The kid gave him a dirty look. Ray and Kendra, still holding hands, moved briskly into the walkway.

  The announcer informed the cheering crowd that three booty shaking finalists had been chosen. Ray never glanced back. Tree guessed that when you were with Kendra Callister, you weren’t much concerned with who won a booty shaking contest.

  Still holding hands, the couple continued through the walkway, up some steps and then down into the courtyard where Ray had parked his Lexus. He held the door open so Kendra could slip inside. Tree watched the Lexus pull onto Estero Boulevard. He ran across the street to his car.

  The late afternoon traffic streamed off the island and snaked onto the bridge. For a time Tree couldn’t see the Ray Man’s car. But then he came over the bridge’s crest and spotted it on San Carlos Boulevard.

  The previous evening he had argued that Kendra and Ray could not possibly know each other. More evidence he should always listen to Freddie. Of course, there could be any number of reasonable explanations for Freddie’s boss and his daughter-in-law leaving the Lani Kai Island Resort together. He just could not think of what those reasonable explanations might be.

  He caught up to the Lexus as it swung onto Summerlin. The Ray Man drove leisurely, in no rush to get anywhere, happy, appare
ntly, to be in the company of the wondrous Kendra.

  To Tree’s surprise, they drove to Dayton’s Supermarket. The Ray Man parked, and they got out together. He walked Kendra to where she had left her Dodge Durango. She leaned against the hood, so that Ray could avidly kiss her mouth. She returned the kiss. As avidly? Tree thought not, although at this distance, it was hard to tell.

  Ray opened the door for her. Kendra blessed him with one of her most impressive smiles and then climbed inside. He watched as she drove out of the parking lot. When she was on Periwinkle Way, the Ray Man performed a curious little march into the store.

  From his vantage point on the shoulder of Periwinkle Way where he had stopped the Beetle, Tree wondered if Freddie might have seen this little drama unfolding from inside the store. He looked at his watch. It was getting close to seven. She was home by now and wondering where he was. He debated what to do next. It didn’t take much investigative prowess to imagine Kendra driving to Andy Rosse Lane and a quiet evening with her husband and in-laws. He could go back to the Lani Kai and Brand Traven’s mysterious passenger, but he had no heart for it.

  Home, then.

  ________

  Kendra was just getting out of her Dodge when he pulled into the drive.

  She gave him the same dazzling smile she had provided Ray. “Hey, Papa Tree. What are you doing? Following me?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Tree said with more seriousness than he intended.

  “I’m a pretty boring person to be following around,” she said breezily.

  “I didn’t think you knew Ray Dayton,” Tree said.

  She did not blink before she said, “I don’t.”

  “Funny, at the Lighthouse I got the impression the two of you had met before.”

  Kendra smiled and said, “I’m going to jump into the shower.”

  To wash off the Ray Man? Tree wondered.

  They went inside together and found Freddie in the kitchen tossing a salad. She had changed from her work clothes into shorts and a T-shirt. He kissed her on the mouth and held her tight. Kendra disappeared into the guest bedroom.

  “Are you all right?” she said.