“Do you ever hear from Stacey?” Vickie Ann said.
Aaron felt his jaw tighten. “Not really.”
“I was real sorry when the two of you split up.”
“Thanks, hon.” Time to get out of here. Aaron walked out through the sun porch, where the home renovation show was still on and Jim was snoring in his chair. He left by the back door, closing it gently behind him, got in his car, and headed for the Blue Jay Cafe.
– 12 –
As twilight fell around the house where Vickie Ann and Jim lived, a dark figure, unidentifiable in the fading light, could be seen emerging from the shadow of the trees bordering the vacant lot behind the house. A hat cast a deeper shadow over the person’s face, and dark clothing blended with the surrounding vegetation. Slowly and smoothly the figure moved toward the alley, crossed it behind the garage, and appeared again beside the garage, in the darkness beneath the roof overhang.
Lights were on in the house. There was a glow in the back room, where frosted louvers on the windows and door were closed. A lamp over the back door illuminated the stoop, but toward the back of the yard the light was dim. The figure slipped into the cavernous darkness of the garage. The garage was always open. It was used for storage, while the family car sat in the driveway.
Now almost completely hidden, the figure stood inside the doorway and peered out. Once in a while, a shadow moved across the back room of the house.
Eventually, the interloper emerged from the garage, moved toward the house as far as the chinaberry trees, and stood near the trunk of one of them— a darkness blending into darkness. Several minutes passed before the figure took a couple of tentative steps toward the house.
The back door swung open, and Jim Tuttle emerged, wearing pajamas, waving his cane. “You murdering bastard!” he bellowed. “I’m going to whip your ass, you hear me?” He turned toward the open door and called, “Get me that gun, girl!” When Vickie Ann didn’t appear, he called again, even louder, “I told you to get me that gun!”
Vickie Ann appeared behind him, wrapped in a towel, her hair dripping water. She said, “Daddy Jim! Please, Daddy Jim. Come on inside, OK? I’ve got ice cream for you!”
Jim waved his cane toward the chinaberry trees. “He’s out there! I saw him!”
“I’ll look. I’ll go and look, but I got to get some clothes on,” Vickie Ann said.
“He was right yonder!” Jim said.
But nobody was there. The person in the shadows was gone.
– 13 –
At two in the morning Leo Swain, the night cashier at Margene’s MiniMart and Exxon on St. Elmo Beach, was sitting behind the checkout counter with his ballpoint and notebook, working on his autobiography. The title was going to be Confessions of a Humble Man. It had come to Leo out of the blue one day, and it was perfect. Having a title made his writing seem like a real book.
Leo was a short, slightly plump, ordinary-looking man whose once-sandy hair was now a bristly gray. He always wore baggy khakis, T-shirts with a breast pocket to hold several ballpoint pens, and battered sneakers. His clothes looked like items from a thrift store, and that’s what they were. He was mostly by himself during his shift, although the cleaners came in, and once in a while Margene’s daughter Jasmine stopped by to chat and get cigarettes.
Being by himself was fine with Leo. He was accustomed to being alone, and he preferred it that way. The late shift clientele was mostly transient— truckers, travelers driving straight through to South Florida, or random people in the grip of drugs, drink or despair who wandered in for their own unfathomable reasons. Most of these people didn’t want to linger, since the lights were bright— both inside and at the pumps in front of the building— and there was no place to sit down. They came, and they went. Daytime, Leo imagined, would be different— tourists who were renting condos or motel rooms or living in one of the Villas just up the road might shop for supplies and buy a beach towel, some sun block, a loaf of bread, a bag of chips. But Leo didn’t work at Margene’s in the daytime, so he didn’t really know.
Being the night cashier had worked well for Leo, and he had used his time to fill many notebooks with Confessions of a Humble Man. He kept the notebooks in a neat stack on a shelf in his trailer. At first, he had imagined writing this book to be a short and simple job, but once he had started, he discovered that he had much more to say than he expected. Every time he thought an episode of his story was done, he thought of other items to add. Often, they were incidents that had completely slipped his mind until that moment. So he would go ahead and include them, because a confession implied to Leo that you told everything and didn’t leave anything out.
Leo stared into space, nibbling the end of his ballpoint. Out in the forecourt a truck pulled in off the highway, its headlights briefly sweeping through the glass front of the MiniMart. At the same time, a woman came around the corner of the building, passed through the glare of the truck headlights, and walked in through the front door.
The woman didn’t look like Leo’s usual customer. For one thing, she picked up a shopping basket. For another, she didn’t look drunk or drugged or even sleepy. For yet another, she hadn’t arrived in a car— or if she had, she didn’t park out front. She looked clean, in loose white pants and a blue shirt, her silvery hair pulled back. Leo, usually the most reticent of men, said, “Evening.”
The woman smiled and nodded at him and started to scan the shelves. Leo had a feeling that this woman might be disappointed in the food choices she would find at Margene’s, but that was none of his business. He bent over his notebook once again, but remained aware of the woman wandering up and down with her basket.
Eventually she approached the counter, and Leo slipped his notebook and pen onto a shelf underneath and said, “Did you find everything you need, ma’am?”
She put her basket on the counter. “Yes, I did. I was glad to see that you’re open all night.”
“Only place on the beach that is.” He turned to the basket. She’d gotten eggs, a loaf of bread, a package of pre-sliced cheese, crackers, milk, cereal, a box of tea bags, a can of coffee, coffee filters, a few other items. As he was about to ring the total she picked from a rack a laminated map of the county and added it to her purchases. “That’s it for you?” Leo said.
“That’s it, thanks.”
He bagged her groceries, and as he ran her credit card she said, “This place— wasn’t there a bar or lounge or something on this location once? The Gulf Dream Lounge?”
Leo gave her the slip and watched her sign. He took a breath and said, “Yes, ma’am, I believe there was. From what I understand, that place was pretty much destroyed when Hurricane Eloise went through here in the fall of 1975.”
She picked up her bags. “It never reopened?”
Leo shook his head. “There was too much damage to rebuild it, so eventually it got torn down and this place was built. That’s the way I heard it, anyhow.”
“I see.” She turned to go, but turned back and said, “But the Villas— just up the hill, there. They used to be called the Gulf Dream Villas, didn’t they? Like the lounge?”
Leo paused, as if thinking, and said, “They’ve been called the Sunset Villas a good long time now. Maybe they were Gulf Dream Villas back in the day. They’ve been renovated a few times over the years, I expect.”
“I expect so,” she said, and once again turned to leave.
As she was going out the door, Leo called after her, “Are you into local history, or something?”
“Something like that,” she said over her shoulder. Then the door closed behind her and he watched her go around the side of the building, back the way she came.
– 14 –
Carrying her bags of food from Margene’s MiniMart, Clara walked around the side of the building and up the road leading away from the beach. She didn’t have far to go, and it wasn’t particularly dark, since the glow from the MiniMart augmented the light from the neon sign at the entrance to the Sunset Villas par
king lot. Maybe they were the Sunset Villas now, but for Clara they were the Gulf Dream Villas and they always would be. Ronan had lived in unit number seven, and Alice Rhodes lived in unit number two. Clara herself had checked into unit number seven, Ronan’s old place, late this afternoon.
Why? Nadine had asked the question. Clara had seen something like alarm in her eyes. Nadine said, “Of course I’ll look after the gallery if you want me to, but— why, Clara? Why do you want to do this?”
Clara shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
Nadine said, “I’m afraid it will make things worse. Keep you stirred up. Keep you from getting over this.”
There was a silence before Clara said, “Nadine, let’s face up to something. I’m not going to get over this. Ronan dies, alone, over on Loggerhead Point, and his body lies there for weeks before it’s found. That’s bad enough, but now he’s supposed to be a killer? I can’t move on from that, turn the page, whatever you want to call it. So I might as well do what my gut tells me.”
Clearly, Nadine wasn’t buying it. She said, “And your gut tells you to go to St. Elmo, stay in the place where Ronan lived, and— what?”
“I’ll find out when I’m there,” Clara said.
So she had done it— gone online, searched for Gulf Dream Villas, discovered Sunset Villas in the same location. Sunset Villas was handled by a management agency called Gulf Coast Getaways, and Clara’s request to rent unit number seven as soon as possible had been granted. She had stopped by the office this afternoon and picked up the key from a young woman who seemed fairly uninterested in the transaction. “Enjoy your stay,” the young woman said, her eyes straying to her phone, which was lying on the desk. “It’s real convenient for the beach.”
Clara took the key. The young woman added, “You just have to be careful crossing the highway, is all.”
And that had been that.
Plastic bags in hand, she had reached the Sunset Villas sign and the entrance to the parking lot. I’ll find out when I’m there, Clara had said. So far, she had found out only that Margene’s MiniMart was open all night. She was here, she supposed, because it had become impossible to stay away. She had been told the crime was solved, and the case was closed. In The Book of Alice she had found evidence that Ronan knew Alice, to say the least. It would not be a stretch to say that he had been obsessed with her. Ronan was dead. Alice was dead. But Clara was alive. What was she supposed to do?
She walked along the row of shabby detached stucco cabins to the one with her car parked in front. The units were placed quite close together, with a concrete walkway connecting them. There was a light over each front door, and a pot with an artificial tree sitting to one side. The place may have been refurbished a few times over the years, and re-named, but still it resembled something from an earlier era. It wasn’t really surprising that Clara had been able to rent unit number seven at the very last minute.
She dug the key, on a plastic tag with the numeral seven on it, out of the side pocket of her handbag and let herself in the front door. Although the window air-conditioner was rattling, the place still had a musty smell. She turned on the inside light, exposing the threadbare sofa, scuffed baseboards, a glass-topped dining table and chairs of unraveling rattan. A cockle shell sitting on an end table had a smear of cigarette ash in it.
In an alcove to the right of the door was the tiny kitchen space, a half-size refrigerator, electric stove with uneven burners, minuscule sink, a couple of feet of Formica-topped counter. Clara set her bags on the counter and started putting away her purchases. She had eaten earlier, on the road, but that was hours ago. Still, she wasn’t hungry. When she couldn’t sleep, and she realized the MiniMart was open, she had gone there for diversion as much as anything else. It had been a sudden impulse to ask the clerk about Gulf Dream Villas and the Gulf Dream Lounge.
Her groceries stowed, Clara looked around the room and told herself, as she’d been telling herself since she arrived, that Ronan had lived here. Of course it had changed, but he had been within these walls. The thought made her heart pump absurdly hard. She decided to make herself a cup of tea. It was almost three a.m. She didn’t think she’d be sleeping tonight.
The tea made, she settled back on the couch and thought about Ronan, living in these modest rooms. It was impossible not to think about him, being here.
She had always known that Ronan was strange. Not just a “crazy artist.” He could be flat-out crazy, and Clara had lived with it a long time. He was crazy when they met, all those years ago. Clara was a graduate student in art and Ronan was a hanger-on, one of the shifting group of people attracted to the campus without being enrolled in any program. Ronan was a bit older than most of them. He had been in the Air Force. He didn’t talk about his past, except to say that the Air Force wasn’t for him. After leaving the service he had drifted to Tallahassee, where he turned up as a magnetically handsome lunatic painter. He lived in somebody’s garage, and when he was in the mood, he painted ferociously. When the mood dissipated he discarded his work, left it on the floor, or in the yard, or used it to cover drafty cracks in the wall or floor.
Clara was fascinated. An only child, she had come from a privileged background. She grew up in the suburbs of New York City, went to the best private schools, was given every advantage. She had always loved to draw and paint, and her talents had been encouraged by her parents, her teachers, her professors. She was thought to be promising, although occasionally she was criticized for being too stiff, too safe, not adventurous enough in what she attempted in her work.
She tried to make up for all that by attaching herself to Ronan. He was so handsome, with his wild, dark curls, his sharp features, his blue eyes, that his weird behavior came across, at least to Clara at the time, as charming eccentricity. His clothes were mismatched, threadbare, torn. He wouldn’t wear a coat in winter. He wouldn’t wear a watch, and he was never on time for anything. Ever. He would disappear for a week, two weeks, with no warning, and Clara held the fort, made sure the rent on the garage was paid, used the key he had given her and checked on his paintings when it rained, so she could move them if the roof was leaking again.
He was an artist. What Clara admired about Ronan and his work was his willingness to go all out, try anything, never hold back. He had a vision and he stuck to it, and it was dark and tumultuous and strange. Others who saw his work and, who were perhaps not as infatuated with Ronan as Clara was, said that Ronan’s paintings, always abstracts, were slapdash and unfocused and didn’t hit the mark.
Which could not be said of his sexual prowess. At that time and place, Clara was his abject admirer and a needy participant in whatever Ronan had to offer in the sexual prowess department.
Naturally her parents despised Ronan, so for Clara it was foreordained that she and Ronan would get married. She adored his weirdness, his risky behavior, his flouting of convention. Her parents, loving Clara and fearing the worst, gave her a trust fund for herself and any children she might have, while making sure that Ronan would never be able to lay his hands on it. Ronan was unfazed by all this, if not downright uninterested. When pinned down, he said he loved Clara. He was OK with getting married, so they got married. It was Clara’s dream.
So she had gotten what she wanted, and she had paid the price. Ronan continued to be Ronan. He did as he pleased, paid no attention to social conventions, was rude when it suited him, withdrawn when it suited him, went to Loggerhead Point when it suited him.
And yet she had loved him. She always had. And he had loved her, too. She had never doubted it. Until now.
Clara had brought The Book of Alice with her. It was in the top dresser drawer in the bedroom. Clara was amazed at how different it was from any other work she had known Ronan to do. The pictures of Alice showed a skill at portraiture Clara had never realized he had. The work was Ronan’s work, but it was a different Ronan.
She hadn’t told anyone about the book. Why should she? The case was closed, as Aaron had reminded her. To
show Aaron The Book of Alice would only confirm his belief in Ronan’s guilt. Ronan had known Alice. Judging from his drawings, Ronan had been obsessed with Alice. Maybe Ronan had loved Alice. And then, for some reason, Ronan had killed Alice. It wasn’t even an unusual story.
Clara put her teacup and saucer on a side table and stretched out on the couch. So here she was, in a place Ronan had lived in forty years ago, before Clara had known him.
But here was the thing. She had never known him.
– 15 –
Leo Swain stood at the back door of Margene’s MiniMart, watching the woman walk up the road toward the Villas with her shopping bags. He had put a brick in the back door to hold it open while he went as far as the edge of the dumpster. He had known she was heading up there. The Gulf Dream Lounge, Gulf Dream Villas— where else would she be going?
He had asked if she was interested in local history and she’d said, “Something like that.” Yeah. And Leo would like to know what the Something consisted of.
She didn’t look behind her, and why would she? Leo hadn’t made any noise, and it wasn’t dead quiet out here anyway. There was an occasional car or truck going by on the highway, the waves were breaking on the beach, there were insect sounds, the lights at the fuel station buzzing. She was focused on getting where she was going, not looking back to see if somebody was watching her.
She turned in at the Villas parking lot, and he watched until she went to one of the doors, opened it, and went in. A light came on inside. Leo counted the doors. She was in number seven.
He went back inside and took a look at the name on her credit card slip. Clara Trent. Right. And she was staying in unit seven, at the Villas.
Leo sat down behind the counter again. He took his notebook and pen from its shelf and put it in front of him. He started to pick up his pen, then decided he could use a cup of coffee. He got himself a cup, took his place again, and sipped it slowly.
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