The Mangrove Coast

by Randy Wayne White

  There was a shot of him with his arm around Amanda’s shoulder. She wore a green cap and gown. They both looked very happy, particularly Amanda. Proud daughter with proud daddy. Maybe she and her stepfather had been better friends than she’d let on. Maybe she was reluctant to admit that she, too, felt betrayed by the man’s behavior.

  In the corner was a well-organized computer station. Lots of shelves rising above the computer screen in tiers. Through the bay window, the Gulf of Mexico and western horizon were a panel of pastel blue on a ribbon of rust and turquoise.

  It was getting late. How much longer did I have before Frank’s wife returned?

  I was still carrying the dish towel, wiping off my prints as I went. Sound is amplified and sharpened when one is inside the empty home of a stranger. It jabs like a needle. Each time a car slowed outside, I froze. I went through the roll-out drawers. Checked for little hidey-holes behind the desk, beneath the heavy plaques. Got down on my knees and looked under the desk. Had he taped the file underneath?

  Nope.

  Kept pausing to listen.

  Couldn’t find the file.

  In the massive bedroom, with its bathroom sauna and pool-sized tub, there were all kinds of interesting discoveries to be made in the dresser drawers and beneath the bed.

  Frank and the new Mrs. Calloway apparently enjoyed sexual aids and pornography. Lots of plastic toys and interesting photographs and unmarked videocassettes.

  If such sexual play had been a part of Gail’s life before the divorce, perhaps Merlot had had an easier time talking her into it after the divorce.

  But still no file.

  I was very happy to leave that bedroom. Snooping through the personal belongings of married couples does not mesh with the self-image upon which I rely to govern my daily activities. I felt like a sneak. I felt like some low-life voyeur.

  I’d already searched the downstairs thoroughly. Decided to give it one last quick sweep. I was in the den, looking under magazines, looking under sofa cushions. If I turned my head one way, I could see into the kitchen: Frank’s torso and bare feet were visible through the doorway. Turn my head the other way, I could look through translucent curtains to the driveway and street outside.

  Good thing, too. I was shuffling through a stack of books when I saw a car swing fast into the drive. A new ‘Vette convertible, black on black, top down. I stood there just long enough to see an attractive blond woman slide out. Hair spray and a body that bounced and flexed within an expensive white tennis outfit.

  The quickness of her movements suggested that she might be irritable, maybe angry. That was my impression.

  I recognized her face from photos all around the house. It was Frank’s trophy wife, Skipper. I didn’t linger to assess or admire. She appeared to be not just irritable but also in a hurry. In a few long strides, I was through the kitchen and out the busted glass door into the pool area.

  It was there that something odd and unexpected caught my attention. Something lying on the deck: A checked scarf lying near the screen door. Bright checks on a white field. The little squares were raspberry red.

  What was a scarf doing there? It seemed out of place, accidental. I’m not sure why I did it, but I did: I leaned and swept the scarf up in my right hand like a rider on a horse, then closed the pool door very, very quietly behind me.

  A few moments later, I was on the beach strolling along, the scarf bunched up in my big hand. I had a role to play. It was not a difficult role: big wind-burned tourist in khaki fishing shorts and gray polo shirt enjoying the sunshine through his wire rimmed glasses. I did not allow myself to meet the eyes of fellow strollers who now paused to exchange glances that, at first were puzzled, then concerned.

  There was a noise….

  What was that noise?

  Even above the sound of rolling waves, everyone on the beach could hear it: a shrill staccato howl that seemed to grow progressively louder. It originated from the shadows beyond the sea grapes.

  A lady in a gigantic sun hat waddled toward me as if seeking shade or protection. She wore a blue polka-dot swim dress and was carrying a basket of shells. Zinc oxide was smeared across her pink face. The rapidness of her breathing illustrated a neuron fear. The next level is panic.

  To me, a stranger, she said, “Sir? Is … is that the sound of a woman screaming?”

  I continued walking, as I answered, “Yes, ma’am, a woman screaming. I believe that it is.”

  The Temptation Restaurant, a fixture of Boca Grande’s tiny crossroads downtown, is only a few blocks from the beach and so was a short walk from the late Frank Calloway’s home. It’s in an old stucco building next door to an art gallery, across a sleepy street from Island Bike & Beach, not far from Italiano Insurance and the Boca Beacon newspaper offices.

  If I’d hustled to Whidden’s Marina, hopped in my skiff and really pushed it, it was possible, just possible, I could have been making the turn past Woodring Point and into Dinkin’s Bay during the last, last pearly glow of dusk. Truthfully, that’s what I would have preferred to do. Get home, speak confidentially with Tomlinson, let him help me decide the best way to break the news to Amanda that Frank was dead.

  How do you tell someone that she is now twice a paternal orphan?

  But racing away from Boca Grande was not the smart thing to do.

  Nope.

  I needed to be seen around town. I needed to do some talking and be remembered. If asked, the efficient Ms. Betty Marsh would quite accurately inform the police that, yes, the late Mr. Calloway did have an appointment on Thursday afternoon. It was with a man named Ford, a Dr. Marion Ford.

  The police might say to me, You want to hear something really strange? After Calloway died, somebody went through his stuff and wiped all the prints clean. They might say, Someone was there, someone was in the house. So why didn’t you call us and tell us the man was dead?

  If the police had questions, any questions, I wanted my answers to be easily corroborated. The Temptation was where I chose to be seen and be remembered.

  Annie was behind the bar when I walked in. She’s a large chestnut-haired woman with a good smile. When I straddled a stool, she raised her eyebrows and said with mock anger, “So? You don’t have time for your old friends anymore? You too busy to jump in that skiff of yours and fly north more than once or twice a year?”

  For all the tourism, for all the transient comings and goings rightfully associated with the ratty, tacky character that is Florida, the community of waterfolk remains tight and dependable and it doesn’t change much from generation to generation. Annie had been born and raised on the islands. She knew everyone that I knew and more.

  “During tarpon season,” I said, “you’re always so busy. I hate to come up here and get in the way.”

  “We look that busy?”

  There were a couple of men locked in private conversation at the end of the bar. In the dining room, they’d pushed three tables together and a dozen or so cheerful-looking women were drinking iced tea and eating salads.

  “Everybody’s out fishing the hill tide,” Annie said. “Tarpon’ll be on a sure ‘nuff feed. So if it wasn’t for you and the Sarasota Ladies’ Something-or-Another Book Club in there, this place’d be like a tomb. Jim and Karen done left. Hey—how about I read your fortune?”

  Annie liked playing with tarot cards. It was her little hobby. I ordered a Bud Light and a bag of chips while I waited on one of Smitty’s grouper sandwiches. I proceeded to tell Annie my sad story as she laid out the tarot cards.

  “I make an appointment to talk to this guy, I run my boat all the way up here, and the man’s not home.”

  Annie was slapping the cards down on the bar, looking at them. “Geez, what a jerk,” she said. Her mind was on the cards. “You’re goin’ on a trip real soon. Pretty long trip, too. Where you goin’?”

  “Colombia. I’ve got a morning flight out of Miami tomorrow on Avianca, so—” I stopped chewing for a moment. “How’d you know I was going
somewhere?”

  “You got the Three of Swords up next to the Ten of Swords. The last time I saw that, one of the Hamilton boys met a girl at the Pink Elephant and the two of them drove her mini-van all the way up north someplace. Dee-troit? Maybe Cleveland or a place like that. Those cards, they almost always mean some kinda trip.” As she spoke, she was looking at the checkered scarf I had placed on the bar. “Where’d you get that? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like that before.”

  I patted it. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Looks handmade. The checks, that berry color, looks like they mighta used natural dye.” Fingers at the top corners, she held it out for a more complete inspection. “Whew! Kinda smells funny, though, don’t it. What is that? Like a fish smell.”

  I sniffed my fingers. Yep, sour and fishy.

  She said, “Smells just like some of the tarpon fishermen come in here after a hard day. ’Course then, Doc, maybe that’s the way biologists smell, too. ’Scuse me if I don’t check.” She placed the scarf back on the bar. I balled it up and stuck it in my pocket.

  I said, “Did you hear what I was telling you? This guy I had the appointment with, Frank Calloway, that’s his name. I was supposed to meet him at his house at six-thirty sharp. But like I told you, nobody home. Stood there like an idiot knocking on the door.”

  “Knocking on the door?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What, he didn’t have a bell?”

  The woman didn’t miss much.

  I told her I’d tried the bell first, but figured it was broken because no one answered the door.

  “I don’t know any Frank Calloway. Never even heard the name. Where’s he live?”

  Gilchrist Avenue, I told her.

  “Oh, one of the Beach-Fronters. But pretty new to the area, right? The old-timey Beach-Fronters, I know all them.”

  “Yeah, I think the Calloways have only lived here a few months. Pretty rude, if you think about it. Have me run my boat all the way up here, then stand me up.”

  “Doggone rude. But maybe he’s got a good reason for it. Maybe he had an emergency or something.” She was moving the cards around concentrating. “Say, Doc, tell me somethin’.”

  “Sure.”

  “You know anybody that just died recently?”

  I stopped chewing again. “Why do you ask that?”

  “‘Cause you got the Tower card faceup. The last time I saw the Tower card faceup the way she is now, it was for this tourist lady, and a friend of a friend of hers got dead somehow. Maybe zapped by a truck or something, but he sure ‘nuff passed away.”

  “Is that right.”

  “Yep. The Tower card, positioned the way she is now, it almost always means somebody’s ready to cash in their chips.”

  I looked at the card. It was a gothic drawing of a medieval tower. The tower had been set afire … or caught in an explosion, perhaps. Stones were flying skyward in a starburst of orange flames.

  “I don’t believe in this stuff, Annie. You know that.”

  “Who says I believe it? Readin’ the cards, it’s just something to do for fun. How else am I gonna pass the time?”

  She moved that card, placed a couple of more cards on the bar and stared at them while I sipped my beer.

  From the dining room, I could hear the Sarasota ladies laughing about something. Playing some kind of game, it seemed. Friends and mothers, probably, who had the self-amused glow of contented, attentive wives. Good women getting together, having fun.

  It was my guess that Skipper would not have been readily accepted by this nice group.

  I looked up from the bar. Annie was backdropped by rows of liquor bottles. On the wall were old framed caricatures of local baseball players. The cartoons had been done years ago by Sam the three-fingered artist. Sam had lived down on the Keys, then one day just disappeared. Or so the story went.

  I said, “Say, Annie, I was wondering about something: Have you seen a man roaming around town, a really huge guy. Like I’m talking maybe three hundred pounds, probably more, and a head the size of a football. With perfect hair, the kind that looks painted smooth. You would’ve noticed him.”

  It was a reasonable question to ask. Not that it seemed likely that Calloway had been murdered. Wet tile, bare feet, blood on the marble countertop and hard kitchen floor. But it was a possibility and it didn’t hurt to check with one of the most observant women around if someone matching Merlot’s description was in town. Maybe the trip to Colombia, the entire postcard business, was a ruse just like Darkrume, Merlot’s alter ego.

  Annie said, “A really fat guy, huh? Is that the man you come here to see? This Calloway fellow?”

  “No. Another guy I thought I might run into up here.”

  “The carnival people, the ones who winter up in Gibsonton? They drive down to the beach sometimes. The ones they call freak show people, but you couldn’t meet nicer folks. The Giant used to visit with the Monkey-Faced Lady. They’d stop in for lunch. Sometimes they’d bring a couple of the midgets along. And the one I think they call Crab Man, I just seen him. Maybe they got a Fat Man travelin’ with ‘em.”

  “No, this isn’t a circus person.”

  Her attention was back on the cards. “You sure no one you know died recently? A woman. I’d think it’d be a woman.”

  That almost made me smile. Calloway lying stone-cold dead only a few blocks away and the cards were telling her it was a woman. “Yep,” I said, “I’m pretty sure I haven’t had any lady friends die recently.” Smitty had brought out my sandwich. I took my time, napkin on knee, getting ready to eat.

  Annie’s a nice person. I could see the concern in her face. “Then I sure wish you wouldn’t take that trip. Colombia, you say? Some of the local boys have been down there a time or two. They say she can be a pretty dangerous place, Colombia.”

  “Annie, you’re worrying for no reason. I already told you I don’t believe in fortune-telling. Tarot cards, palmreading, none of it.”

  “I don’t either, Doc. I don’t either!” Now she was scooping up the cards. Seemed eager to get them back in their box. “I just read them for fun. They don’t mean nothin’. Not a blessed thing. Just fun.”

  I was smiling at her. “Then why do you look so concerned?”

  “‘Cause sometimes readin’ the cards is more fun than others. Now eat your grouper and let’s talk ‘bout something else.”

  13

  On the phone, Amanda Richardson said to me, “You’re talking about Frank? Why’re you being so nice, trying to get me to say that I still feel an emotional attachment to Frank?”

  Smart woman … and exactly what I was trying to do. The reason was, she’d spoken badly of the man earlier and I didn’t want her saddled with additional guilt when I told her that Calloway was dead. Wanted to nudge her into saying some nice things before I gave her the news. Something else: I wanted to get a sense of how she felt for him deep down. She’d already told me her roommate wasn’t home, and I needed to decide whether I should contact one of her close friends first. Make sure the friend was nearby when I told her. Or maybe drive over there. It was only two hours to Lauderdale, and I was flying out of Miami International tomorrow anyway.

  Would that work? No … because by the time I got there, someone else would’ve already contacted her. The county cops, probably. So I needed to tell her now or find a way to get her out of her apartment; give her something to do until I had time to get to her.

  She said, “A question like that, it seems just a tad touchy-feely for a guy’s guy like you. Or wait … tell me if I’m right: you and Tomlinson went and got drunk and you’ve got a bet going or something. About how Amanda really feels about Frank-the-jerk. One of those heavy conversations drunk men have.”

  It was nearly 8:00 P.M. and I was back in Dinkin’s Bay, back on Sanibel Island. My skiff was tied bow and stern to the counterweight and pulley system I use when the weather’s foul or I might be away for a while. There seemed to be a little preweekend party going
on aboard the soggy old Chris-Craft, Tiger Lily. Chinese lanterns had been strung around the flybridge and I could hear music drifting across the water: “Rum & Coca Cola,” the big band version. Lately, JoAnn and Rhonda had been listening to 1940s music. They had also taken to wearing glossy scarlet lipstick, equally bright hibiscus blossoms in their hair, and flowered sarongs. The Dorothy Lamour look, as if waiting for the GIs to return from overseas.

  Fashion is nothing more than gossip in fabric form, energized by hope and dispersed by osmosis. Which is probably why I’d been noticing that men around the dock were beginning to favor pleats and anything olive drab. And probably why, lately, female waitresses and bartenders around the islands were parroting the Dinkin’s Bay look: sandals, Lennon Sisters hairstyles and sarongs.

  Funniest thing of all, though, it was Tomlinson who had rediscovered and popularized that Stage Door Canteen combination.

  The sandals and sarong, anyway. His hair, Tomlinson always wore that down. Even when he played baseball.

  With the phone wedged between my shoulder and ear, I told Amanda, “This has nothing to do with a bet. I’m asking for a reason. That question, Do you understand why you’re mad at Frank? it’s something you need to consider. What I’m saying is, I know you care about the man. No matter what you said about him earlier, I know he helped raise you and you care about him, and … that’s all a given.”

  “Christ-o-mighty, you can be so weird sometimes, Ford. Talk about a strange phone day! I get home, there’s this hysterical message from Skipper the Bimbo Queen on the recorder, call her immediately. The two born-again dolphins must have had their first fight. Now you’re behaving like Father O’Malley. Hey, can you hang on a minute? I’ve got your uncle on the other line.”

  So the newly widowed Skipper had been trying to get in touch. Amanda probably hadn’t called her back because she’d been talking to Tuck. The man’s timing was extraordinary. This was a rare exception because his timing was almost always, always bad.

  I waited … and waited. Then: “Your uncle, he really could get to be one of my favorite people in the world. He’s so darn … I don’t know, sincere or something. And so easy to talk to. He makes me laugh. Really laugh.”