Shadowed Paradise

by Blair Bancroft

  Claire sat in stunned silence while Phil—with all the smug satisfaction of a person killing two birds with one stone—arranged Claire’s Open House and her life along with it.

  “He’ll meet you there at quarter of two,” Phil said after hanging up the phone. “Do not, repeat do not, go inside until Brad gets there. He was very specific about that, and I wouldn’t go against his instincts, Claire. He’s had experience with that sort of thing.”

  Not a surprise. Somehow she’d recognized Brad’s expertise from that first authoritative snap of What’s your name, son?

  Claire floated out of Phil’s office on a surge of hope tainted by a strong dollop of mortification. Phil had manipulated Sunday’s arrangement. Brad was just being kind. That’s all. Noblesse oblige.

  Diane Lake’s toyboy dispensing charity.

  Expect nothing, get nothing. Claire’s lips curved into a wry smile. Sunday could be a big day or the death knell of dreams scarcely begun.

  He’d tried so hard to be good. His mother would have been proud. But it was Sunday. And he couldn’t stop thinking about Kim Willis. And Betty Siffert. How they tasted. How it felt to be able to do anything he wanted. To touch soft young flesh, the tight brown curls that camouflaged their innermost secrets. How it felt to be inside. Just the memory made him hard.

  There was a word for what he’d discovered he liked. Necrophilia. Had a nice ring to it, necrophilia.

  Sure rang his bell.

  Hunting season . . .

  Soon.

  “Hi.” Brad slid out of his pickup. “Good job on the Open House signs. I followed them all the way here.”

  Claire swallowed hard. One look at Brad Blue standing tall, bronzed, and powerful, his pale gold hair nearly white in the summer sun, and parts of her body she had been ignoring for years were clenching in blatant arousal. She could only hope he’d attribute her flushed face to the blazing heat of the July afternoon.

  “That’s what I like about the rainy season,” she returned blandly. “Nice soft earth. No problem getting the signs into the ground.”

  As if either one of them was paying attention to the inanities coming out of the other’s mouth.

  “Got the key?” Brad asked, holding out his hand. “We’ll fry if we stay out here.”

  And wouldn’t Brad Blue expect to open the door for her, Claire thought. And why not? A little old-fashioned gallantry was not to be scorned.

  “You get the drapes, I’ll get the air,” Brad instructed as they entered the darkened house. “A little light, a little cool, and you’re in business.”

  He was right. In five minutes the house was transformed into an expanse of airy openness, sunlight turning the custom-designed house into the rural dreamhome of some doctor, lawyer or business executive. The warm stale air gave way before the cool waft of the air-conditioning system.

  “Not bad,” Brad approved, slowly inspecting the living room that was open to a gallery on two sides of the floor above. At one end of the large room the cathedral ceiling rose in towering panels of glass overlooking a small lake and fenced pastureland beyond. A fourth wall was dominated by a massive fieldstone fireplace. In addition to a gleaming white kitchen, the house also boasted four bedrooms, a recreation room, a caged pool, three-car garage and a five-stall stables.

  “Not a retirement home,” Claire remarked dryly.

  “No way,” Brad agreed. “You may not get any lookers at all, you know. Not even the curious. Big houses in horse country tend to be hard to sell.”

  “Even one or two visitors will give me practice.” Claire’s eager expectancy faded abruptly. Had Brad Blue’s job offer vanished along with his interest? Hastily, she turned away and began to lay out the guest book, information sheets, and a stack of Don Andersen’s cards on the dining room table.

  “Claire, when you’re done, I’d like to talk to you.”

  Oh, God, he was going to take it all back. Diane had won.

  Claire neatened the stacks of paper, brochures, and financial sheets from a mortgage company, lining them precisely side by side. When she could procrastinate no longer, she forced her feet across the pale sculptured tweed of the Berber carpet. With careful precision she sat down on the bright floral print sofa, put her feet flat on the floor, folded her hands in her lap.

  Her show of dignity was lost on her companion. Brad stood with his hands behind his back, staring out the glass-paneled wall toward the lake. The silence lengthened. Claire struggled to keep a professional façade. Brad was searching for the words to tell her he was just doing his ex-wife a favor by being kind to her very lowly employee. Well, get on with it, damn it. How long do I have to suffer?

  After a swift toss of his shoulders, Brad crossed the room and lowered himself into an upholstered chair that matched the sofa. He faced her, his expression stern. “Claire, I want you to listen to me very carefully. What I’m about to tell you is confidential information, but I can’t just leave you here without a warning.”

  A cool breeze swept Claire’s whirling brain. Brad wasn’t delivering a so-long-it’s-been-good-to-know-you speech?

  “Did you hear about Betty Siffert, the Realtor who was found in the pool at her Open House?”

  She would manage a rational reply, she really would. “There was a warning on the MLS computer, but it was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  “Maybe not.” Brad took his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and laid it on the coffee table in front of her. “I have friends in the Sheriff’s Department. Betty Siffert had sex before she drowned. The odds are it was rape.”

  Oh, God. “Who? What? Are they sure?” she stammered.

  Brad’s brilliant blue eyes held her fast. “They’re sure.”

  Dear God . . .

  “Sorry, Claire. I didn’t mean to terrorize you. Frighten, maybe. Terrorize, no. There are at least a hundred Open Houses every week, and the only complaint is that no one shows up. All I’m saying is, don’t accept anyone at face value. Keep the phone in your hand. Don’t hesitate to use it. Promise.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Claire’s sarcasm was palpable. “Now that I’m utterly terrified, you’re going to leave me here alone.”

  Brad stood up, the severity of his manner dissolving into a glimmer of amusement. “Well now, if I thought I could keep my hands off you . . .” He shook his head mournfully. “Sorry, might shock the paying customers. Phil wouldn’t like it.”

  He ambled toward the door before Claire could come up with even the most lame response. Halfway there, he paused and turned back to catch the wide-eyed question in her eyes. “Have you made plans for the fireworks?”

  “Fireworks?” Claire repeated blankly. Surely fireworks in Florida would self-combust.

  A smile tilted one corner of his mouth. “I forgot. You’ve probably never been here this time of year. Fireworks for the Fourth are a big tradition. People hip to hip on the beach, lined up along the waterway, the drawbridges. The boat flotilla stretches out for a mile offshore. It makes for the mother of all traffic jams, but only a Scrooge would miss it. I’ll drive if you and Jamie bring the picnic.”

  She was going to melt at his feet. Kiss the tips of his scruffy boots.

  She was going to kill him.

  Somehow her mask of sangfroid held firm. “Jamie will be thrilled,” she told him. “What time?”

  The blue eyes gleamed as he sketched a salute, acknowledging the subtlety of the hit. “Want to catch the band concert too? How about four o’clock?”

  The details were quickly finalized, and then he was gone, leaving Claire surrounded by the silence of a house set on eight acres “out back of beyond” as her grandmother had called it when she heard about Claire being drafted for a T & T Open House.

  Claire fished a paperback out of her carryall, settled onto the sofa, and attempted to read. Ordinarily, she would have enjoyed the peace and quiet, the wonder of a few moments of heavenly privacy. Instead, after Brad’s warning, she was beginning to understand that old phrase about silence b
eing deafening.

  She fidgeted, put down the book, picked up the cell phone, made sure she understood how it worked. Battery okay. Lots of bars. Comforted, Claire returned to her book.

  On any map of Pine Grove, an area ten miles southeast of Golden Beach, a close-packed city appeared to stretch over fifty square miles. Reality was quite different. When Stan Kolchek moved to Pine Grove fifteen years earlier, the map had looked the same. In actuality, Pine Grove had consisted of a block of storefronts on each side of a two-lane Tamiami Trail with a small cluster of modest homes not far behind the storefronts. All the rest was ghost town.

  The vast checkerboard of roads—platted, bulldozed and paved during one of Florida’s many failed boomtimes–-was the ultimate manifestation of the proverbial road to nowhere. The macadam ran in absolutely straight lines through forests of tall Florida pines where the survey stakes marking carefully divided lots had long since turned to dust.

  When Stan Kolchek came to Pine Grove, everywhere he looked there were roads. Roads with tufts of grass thrusting up through cracks in the pavement. Roads forever cut off by the building of the Interstate. Roads that dead-ended in the middle of nowhere. Roads where teenagers drag-raced. Had beer parties. Went parking. Roads where men hunted wild hogs. And other people’s cows. Perfectly straight empty roads that made ideal landing strips for small planes on private midnight forays into the heart of South Central Florida, only a mile or so from an Interstate that led south to Miami and north to Tampa, Orlando and Tallahassee.

  But the Grove had changed. Stan Kolchek wasn’t all that pleased by the advent of civilization. Pine Grove now had three unpretentious shopping centers, a couple of good restaurants and a video store. He was no longer the only person living in isolated splendor at the end of a road four miles from the highway. His nearest neighbor was now only a mile away.

  Civilization! Stan spat, narrowly missing a fleet-footed chameleon skittering across the cement floor of his dilapidated front porch. He was sitting in an old lawn chair, its webbing faded, the aluminum spotted by the corrosion of the Florida climate. He liked peace and quiet, the gentle flow of the drainage canal that bordered one side of his property. One of many dug by the long defunct development company, the canal ran as straight and true as the roads. If Stan had owned a boat, he could have, with patience, gone all the way to the broad mouth of the Calusa River and out into one of Florida’s largest harbors, eventually out to the gulf itself.

  He never would. But it was nice to know he could.

  Stan and his wife Irina had cleared only enough land to build their modest two-bedroom home. Around them was a forest of pines that had somehow escaped the determined slash and cut of Florida’s turpentine and lumber boom. Irina had passed on four years before. Now Stan had only Burt for company. Burt whose parentage was so mixed that Stan had never tried to figure it out. “A dash of bloodhound,” he’d say. “Must be. Damn dog’s always bringing home bones.”

  The area was full of creatures. Alligators, wild pig, bobcats, raccoons, possums, armadillos, squirrels. Even bears, some said. Snakes weren’t much for bones, but nearly everything else left traces behind.

  Damn dog brought ‘em all home. Presented a few to Stan. Buried the rest in what was left of the garden Stan had not kept it up after Irina was gone.

  Burt, his brown flanks quivering with pride, came trotting out of the woods and headed for the house. Eyes must be getting old, Stan thought. He couldn’t quite see what broken-down treasure the dumb mutt had brought home this time.

  After more than hour of nervous anticipation, Claire heard the faint sound of a car pulling up outside. A quick peek out the window revealed nothing more menacing than a very ordinary couple of early middle age wandering slowly up the walk, admiring the landscaping, the husband bending back, shading his eyes, to check the roof.

  Relief. Blessed relief. Claire, still clutching the phone in a death grip, put on her broadest smile and hastened to open the door.

  The wife was a pharmacist, the husband owned a marina on Manatee Bay. For her the commute would be easy; for him, not. With the warm reality of people willing to share their lives and needs with her, Claire’s nerves snapped back to normal. It wasn’t nice of Brad to scare her like that.

  Although only one other family found their way to the rural neighborhood that afternoon, they proved the validity of Phil’s decision to ask Claire to hold the house open. Doctor Maglione and his wife were trailed by two young children. Mrs. Maglione’s rounded figure revealed they were well on their way toward number three. For the doctor, who worked at a psychiatric hospital just off the Interstate, the commute to Manatee Bay would be easy. For his wife the house was an ideal place to raise a growing family. Claire felt a thrill of accomplishment when the Magliones spent three-quarters of an hour inspecting every aspect of the house and stables. She promised Don Andersen would call them with additional information the very next day. There was, Claire discovered, an amazing amount of satisfaction in helping people find the place they would call home for the next ten or twenty years.

  Adrenalin still pumping, Claire flopped onto the couch with a sigh. She was actually enjoying herself.

  In the complete stillness of the now empty house the cell phone’s ring shrilled like a scream. Claire’s hello sparked a moment of stunned silence followed by, “Who the hell are you?”

  “I beg your pardon.” It was the freezing tone of Claire Langdon of the Upper East Side, Manhattan, and Bedford, New York.

  “I was calling Brad Blue. So who are you?”

  In spite of the harsh, peremptory tone, Claire recognized the voice. She ought to. She heard it every night on the evening news. If there was one thing Claire had learned from her mother and her grandmother, it was how to be a lady. “I’m very sorry,” she apologized in her most polished professional voice. “I’m holding an Open House for T & T Realty and Phil Tierney borrowed Brad Blue’s phone for me. For safety reasons. Perhaps if you tried his home phone?”

  “You’re the one, aren’t you? That woman from the bridge?”

  “Uh, yes.” Claire winced at her momentary slip from aplomb.

  “Well, let me tell you, little girl, there’s no way you can keep a man like Brad Blue. He’ll be back to me in ten seconds flat. All I have to do is crook my little finger.”

  “When Brad comes by to pick up his phone, I’ll be sure to tell him you called.”

  The line went dead.

  When pulling up Open House signs and tossing them into her trunk in the stifling warmth of late afternoon, Claire was still smiling. She rather thought she’d won that one.

  Chapter Seven

  Phil Tierney’s strict code of professional ethics never allowed her to be late for an appointment. She sat at the imposing mahogany conference table in the Board Room of the Golden Beach Library and watched her fellow committee members come straggling in to the meeting. Elinor Johannesen—toned, buffed, and polished in a manner only major expenditure can create—took her seat at the head of the table as Chairperson of the Library Expansion Committee. Mayor Henry Wells had all the right attributes for political position in Golden Beach—a heavy thatch of nearly white hair, a ready smile, a hearty handshake. And the bark of a tiger when a citizen exceeded the allotted three minutes to present a grievance before the city council. He was also that rarity, a native of Golden Beach.

  Virginia Bentley came in, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the light. Phil jumped to her feet and hurried to the elderly author’s side, guiding her to a chair next to her own. They had known each other for years, but each was aware of a certain new awkwardness, their conversation confined to library matters, carefully skirting any mention of Claire Langdon or Brad Blue.

  Phil smiled and waved as Jordan Lovell entered the room in his usual jaunty but elegant style. A handsome man, somewhere in his early forties, Jordan had come to Florida from Colorado eight or nine years ago. Armed with good looks, charm, style, and what appeared to be an ample income, he had quickly est
ablished himself as Calusa County’s most fashionable and successful professional fundraiser.

  “That man could get money out of a stone,” Ginny Bentley whispered in Phil’s ear as Lovell gracefully lowered himself into the seat next to Elinor Johnson.

  Phil stifled a smile as she took in the perfection of Jordan’s navy pinstripe suit. On a scorching Sunday afternoon in July. But she liked the man, had found him a safe, companionable escort on numerous occasions, their mutual interest in elegant style, good conversation, and superior wines, ensured their places on exclusive snowbird guest lists, as well as those of Calusa County’s native elite.

  A nice guy, Phil thought as Lovell gave his full attention to something Elinor Johannesen was saying. Phil had never tried to take her friendship with Jordan to another level. Safe was fine with her.

  The last member of the committee came into the room on a blast of sunshine and hot air. Garrett Whitlaw loomed in the doorway, casting a shadow over those already seated at the table. With him came Power and Big Money.

  Although not a young man, he stood a solid six-feet-three, his whole body radiating the confidence that comes with wealth, position, family background. Sturdily built, his brown hair was attractively frosted with a silver gray that nearly matched the color of his eyes. Eyes that had the far-seeing look common to men whose property stretched to thousands of acres. His face was lean and angular with a prominent but distinguished nose. Even in the July heat he wore a lightweight jacket over a white shirt and tie. Before sitting at the end of the table opposite Elinor Johannesen, he removed his cowman’s broad-brimmed white felt hat, a trademark that had transcended political posturing to become a colorful symbol of the county’s pioneering families. While a Whitlaw sat on the County Commission, native Floridians would not be forgotten.

  Phil had known Garrett Whitlaw nearly all her life, yet she never failed to find him impressive. Beside her, Ginny Bentley drew in an appreciative breath of approval. With Whitlaw men of all generations, age didn’t matter.