by Gaby Triana
I needed a historian or a time machine to help me through this.
Or both.
The Key West Historic Society had closed for the day “until further notice” and the people at the Hemingway Home were kind enough to let me in, though busy collecting their fifty resident six-toed cats (all descendants of Hemingway’s original polydactyl kitty) in preparation for the storm.
I asked one guide there if he knew anything about Casa de los Cayos or the history behind La Concha Inn, and he simply shrugged and said that the resort was more full of ghost tales and speculation than actual history. I would be better off talking to Luis Gallardo at Sunset Spooks Ghost Tours, the agitated middle-aged man told me.
I’d heard that name before. In fact…
I reached into my purse and found the business card still there. I’d met Luis—at least I thought that was his name—while out drinking the other night. He’d told me where to meet for the tour, if I was ever interested. He’d said it went on every night, rain or shine.
So I headed that way, stopping first to find my rental car. Sure enough, it was missing, and I jotted down a note on my phone to call the company tomorrow about it. Maybe I could claim storm traffic for my inability to reach it.
I stood on the corner of Duval and Caroline Streets. Nobody was there. It was 8:30 and getting dark fast, as the next rain band started coming in softly. It’d be silly for anyone to conduct a ghost tour on a night like this, I thought, but then down the sidewalk, illuminated from behind by vendor floodlights, was the silhouette of a medium-build man in jeans and straw hat. A cigar stuck out the side of his mouth, unlit.
“Well, well, well…” He clapped his hands once, rubbed them together. He had a charming accent to match his Cuban shirt, the kind of linen shirt they sold in many shops along Duval Street with vertical stripes and pockets at the breast. “Every time I think no one will show up, there’s always one adventure-seeker. Like walking in cemeteries in the rain, do you?”
I smiled. “Not exactly.”
He arrived to where I stood and stuck out his hand. “Name’s Luis. And you look familiar.”
I took his hand. “We met last week. Ellie.”
“Ah, sí. Ellie from Boston.” He smiled an easygoing grin. “I remember you. Are you a believer or non-believer?” he asked, wiggling his jolly eyebrows. “Of ghosts, of course. I always like to ask my guests.”
“I’m not sure.” I was surprised I hadn’t just said non-believer straight-out.
“A healthy skeptic then.” He chuckled, patting my shoulder. “I like that. And don’t worry, I won’t try to convince you that ghosts exists. I know they do and that’s all that matters.” He winked. “The evidence I’ll show you during tonight’s tour is all real. All photographic taken by our own guests, and a few EVPs—”
“Actually, Luis,” I interrupted him. “Since I’m the only one here, I was wondering if I could just ask you some questions.”
“So you’re not going to make me do my whole song and dance?” he said, somewhat relieved. Holding up his palms, he tested the rainfall. “Good, because I just showered and wasn’t looking forward to getting wet again. Want to go grab a drink?”
“Maybe coffee, if that’s alright.” I couldn’t afford getting sloshed again. The effect could be deadly on my sanity.
Luis was more than happy to take me to the nearest coffee shop, which looked like it was about to close, but he knew the owners, so they let us stay. As we grabbed a table by the window, the harried staff worked to close the place up for the night. Outside, Duval Street looked eerie as locals boarded up their shop windows.
“Why haven’t you left town like all the other tourists?” Luis asked. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, the City of Key West thanks you.” He chuckled.
“I came here for a mini-vacation that turned into a personal mission,” I said. I didn’t give him the details of how spreading my grandmother’s ashes had turned into fighting for her legacy.
The server delivered our coffees, mine, creamy and frothy, in a tall glass and his, dark and strong, in a squat one.
“Sounds intriguing.” He placed his unlit cigar back in his pocket in favor of the tiny espresso he’d ordered. It smelled delicious and made me want to trade my latte for some “cafecito,” as he’d called it.
“I didn’t know about the storm when I booked the flight,” I said, feeling like an idiot for admitting that. “But it’s okay. Coming here has been the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done. I guess locals don’t freak out over the storms like tourists do?”
He shrugged. “Let me tell you something. Key West has seen its share of hurricanes. Storms are nothing to us. Very few ever set us back. This island has seen hundreds of years of horrors and survived it all. We take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’, you know what I mean?”
“Kind of like the blizzards up North where I come from.”
“Somewhat, somewhat. Do you know how Key West got its name?” He possessed the excitement of a teacher who was about to tell me the answer anyway, whether I liked it or not.
I thought of the woman on the plane. “Cayo Hueso something?”
“That’s right. It means Island of Bones in Spanish. See, when the Spanish first arrived here in the 16th century, they found the island covered in bones. Piles of them, and nobody around to explain what happened. Creepy, right?”
“Very.”
“Nobody is sure if the Calusa had a battle here or if they simply used the island as a mass grave, but I believe they were forced as far south as they could go by another nation before they ran out of land and all perished here in battle.”
“Calusa?” I asked.
“Native tribe from Florida. Fishermen, gatherers, peaceful people.”
I nodded. I wondered if these Calusa Indians had anything to do with the native man haunting my dreams. I couldn’t see how, since I’d started seeing him while I was still in Boston.
Luis continued. “And since Spanish rule eventually led to English rule in the Americas, hueso sounded like ‘west-o’ to the English, so Key West stuck.”
“That’s fascinating,” I said. “I thought it was because Key West was the westernmost key in the US.”
“Southernmost. Ninety miles to Cuba.” His light blue eyes lost a bit of their sparkle. “There’s actually another island just west of here. Dry Tortugas National Park.”
“I saw it,” I said. “When the sun was going down.”
“Yes, exactly.”
As fascinating as this was, I needed to take advantage of Luis and ask the questions that didn’t have answers on the internet. “Do you know anything about a house called Casa de los Cayos out on Roosevelt? It’s a small resort inn now. The owner’s name is Syndia Duarte. I was told you might. It’s now called—”
“La Concha Inn,” he finished for me, nodding. “Of course, I do. I would take my guests there every single tour if it weren’t so far out of the way. That place is incredibly haunted.”
I could’ve told him that. If I believed in ghosts, that was.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve stayed there before. Once. Never heard of it called Casa de los Cayos, though.” He folded his hands and studied me intently. “Where did you read that? I’ve read everything there is to know about that place.”
“My grandmother lived there,” I said. “Long ago. That’s what her family called it.”
“Fascinating. I did not know that. Did your family speak Spanish?”
“Not that I know of.”
“They might have. Many residents here learn it because of our proximity to Cuba. So you’re related to the family that lives there now?”
“No, my grandmother came before them. The owners after she left used to be her neighbors. My grandma died last month. I came to spread her ashes, but now it’s like I can’t leave. There’s so much going on, at the inn but also in my head. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
&nbs
p; He lifted his tiny espresso cup and waited for me to clink glasses with him for a toast. “La Concha Inn is one of my favorite topics. And you have me for the next seventy-minutes, Ellie. Ask away.”
TEN
“What do you know about the place, about its history? Pretend I’m on your tour and you’ve taken us out there.” I smiled, clasping my hands together.
He slid the dark foamy drink into his mouth, ending with a satisfied grin. “Well, let’s see. Captain Robert McCardle owned the place. He used to drive the Havana Ferry back and forth between Key West and Havana. In the early 50s, I believe, he found a bag of gold on his boat and told police about it.”
All the same stuff found on the plaque in Syndia’s living room at La Concha.
“What else?” I asked.
“But you probably knew all that already,” Luis said with side-eye. “You probably want the rest of the story.”
“Which is?”
“Which is that Captain McCardle was rumored to have intercepted Captain Bill Drudge’s lobster boat at sea after he’d left home on a treasure-hunting expedition.”
My grandfather. “Wait, what?”
“I thought that would pique your interest.” He bit the corner of his smile.
“Is this common knowledge?”
“Not really, but I’ve talked to the old folks on this island many years, Ellie. Many years.”
“What caused the rumors?”
“The way it happened. Drudge mysteriously went missing days before McCardle came home with a bag of gold when supposedly, he’d been on his shift back from Cuba. How would he have come across that bag on a ferry?” Luis raised an eyebrow.
“That’s what I wanted to know.”
“Also, records show the Havana Ferry arrived hours late that night. It was supposed to arrive back at 10 PM but finally showed up to port past 1 AM. Drudge’s body was never found. Police assumed he became shark food. Soon after, his widow was forced to sell her home—and that became La Concha Inn.”
“My grandmother.” I stared at him. So strange to hear about my nana from the lips of someone I’d never met who lived so far away from us. “Leanne Drudge.”
Luis leaned forward slowly. “Your grandmother was Leanne Drudge?”
“Yes. And Bill Drudge was my grandfather.”
His jaw dropped. “You’re shitting me.”
“I shit not.”
“This is amazing. I’m talking to the living granddaughter.” He laughed crazily. “Where have you been? Wait, Boston, you told me. And you didn’t know any of this until now?”
I shook my head. “My grandmother left Key West soon after her husband died, so I guess she never heard the rumors,” I said. “But please, go on.”
“Some say your grandmother cursed the place when she left.”
I recoiled and narrowed my eyes. “Why would they say that?”
“Well, your grandmother had a reputation for…being different,” Luis said, gauging how sensitive I’d be to his choice of words. “Or, for being atheist rather, which, in those times, was practically a sin.”
Atheist? She never declared that, but Nana did dabble in natural arts—growing herbs in her garden, astrology, going outside to connect with nature. All when she was younger, while she could still walk. Being outdoors was her religion. I remember her always telling me, Come look at the full moon, Ellie. It’s so beautiful, when I was little.
But I couldn’t see her cursing anyone. “Why would her being atheist make her an outsider?”
Luis shrugged nonchalantly. “Why did they hang women in the Salem Witch Trials? Any woman refusing to take part in a patriarchal religion was considered a witch in those times. In your grandmother’s, they couldn’t hang anyone, but they could still frown down on them. In fact, the documents from her time were written by churchgoing residents of Key West who believed that a ‘wayward woman’ lived in that house before the McCardles’ daughter moved in.”
Her nude pictures. My visions of the witchy neighbor hating her.
“That would explain a lot.” I sighed. My grandmother might’ve been a free spirit who didn’t believe in organized religion, but that didn’t make her wayward or a witch. I supposed people were scared of anything different in those times.
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Anyway…” Luis leaned back. “About a year or so after your grandfather was declared dead, McCardle died from a heart attack. His son who also worked for the Havana Ferry was laid off when the service closed in 1961, and the old man’s wife, Susannah, was said to have gone crazy when she lost her other son to influenza.”
“Wow. I didn’t know any of this.”
“Yep. When the women of the family were unable to maintain the two homes on their own, they converted the compound to a resort in the seventies to try and make a living.”
“There were no other working men to support them?” I asked.
“Her son-in-law cut coquina for a living, the husband of Violet McCardle, but as coquina began running low, he had less and less work. Sometime in the seventies, he was found bleeding to death after getting his arm caught in the circular saw.”
Violet McCardle. The old woman who’d died on the dock. Syndia’s mother. And could the man I’d seen in the garden have been the other son-in-law? I felt like I was going crazy with bits and pieces of information.
“I don’t know what happened to the other sister…there were four siblings altogether,” Luis continued, “but one of them ended up staying there and running the motel with her children. After a while, I believe her children left, too. The only one left is Syndia Duarte.”
“How do you know so much?” I asked.
“Let’s just say La Concha Inn was one of the reasons I moved here. I’d read about it in a few primary documents and the part about a rumored hidden treasure always intrigued me.” So, he was another treasure hunter lured to Key West by romance.
“Where are you from?”
“Originally? Havana, Cuba. I came to the US as a child through the Pedro Pan Operation in the sixties. I was raised by family members in Miami, but Key West has always intrigued me. Probably because it’s the closest I’ll ever get to my homeland again.”
No wonder his eyes had darkened upon mentioning Havana. I gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It was over fifty years ago now.” He sat back and rocked on the back two legs of the chair.
“So, what’s with this hidden treasure?” I then asked. “Isn’t it just a story to attract customers to the inn? You can’t tell me it’s actually real.”
“Well, that’s another one of La Concha’s ‘legends,’” he said using air quotes. “When McCardle came home, he claimed to have only found a small bag of gold doubloons, but then he bought the house next door, fixed it up really nice, and for a while, the place was show-worthy. One of the nicest homes on the island.”
“Why does it look so desolate now?”
“The curse—that’s my guess. Seems like the family can’t catch a break. Things get worse for them as the generations go by.”
“Syndia’s mother just died two days ago. I was there.”
“Violet?” His eyes widened and he made a tsk sound. “I hadn’t heard. She was the one to live the longest. I’ll have to call Syndia and give her my condolences.”
“Why don’t you come back with me and tell her yourself? We could use another pair of hands putting up the shutters. She has those old wooden ones. I don’t feel very safe.” I was beginning to think I should’ve left the island when I had the chance.
“I don’t think she’d be happy to see me. Even though they market the inn as a treasure hunting spot, Syndia has never liked having guests there. It’s a slam to their pride. She only displays the treasure memorabilia to sell rooms. She wants to find the gold for herself.”
“If it exists,” I said.
“If it exists.” He smiled. “I know I probably sou
nd like a fool for believing such things, but it’s not as far-fetched as you might think. People said that McCardle stole Drudge’s treasure then…”
“They killed him right then and there,” I finished for him, “fed his body to sharks, which is why they never found him. Is that what happened?”
“We don’t know. It’s all speculation.”
Which is what the tour guide had said at the Hemingway House, that the history of La Concha was speculation and ghost stories at best.
The whole thing sounded like pirates to me. 20th Century pirates. My poor grandfather, finally finding the ship he’d been after only for this man to come along and take it from him then claim to have found it himself. Then, to add insult to injury…he drove my grandmother away and took her house.
“This is all so unfair.” I shook my head, staring past Luis into the blurry, rainy window. “I didn’t know any of this. My mother doesn’t know any of it either.”
“Your grandmother did her best to forget it, I would imagine,” Luis said.
“Was McCardle a celebrity for saying he’d found gold?”
“For a while, this is why he hid it. To keep people from raiding his home and discovering the rest of the gold. Well, apparently, he hid it too well and it remains hidden to this day. That’s how the legend goes.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell anyone where he’d put it?” I asked, agitated. “What if something bad were to happen to him, which obviously did? Nobody would be able to access it. So, he basically drove his family crazy by not telling anyone the location.”
“I have no idea, Ellie. If only I were psychic.” He laughed.
I stared at him.
Maybe this was another aspect of the curse, if there was even such a thing. Maybe part of their misfortune was not being able to enjoy the gold they’d supposedly found. “What about Room 3?” I asked.
He cocked his head suspiciously. “What about it?”
“Why don’t they rent it out?”
“It’s haunted.”
“How would you know?”
“It’s the room I stayed in.” He raised an eyebrow. “Cold drafts, shutters opening and closing by themselves, the smell of smoke when no one around is smoking…”
