SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY

by Ann Cook

  She thought over the conversation in the lounge and the cocktail waitress’s final comment, that Rossi had come to Cedar Key nineteen years too late. She would rise early, before John, and record in her notebook everything she’d heard, in case Rossi did want her help. Otherwise, she’d call the State News Editor or his assistant and explain she’d drawn a blank. In the afternoon she and John would drive to the Suwannee River, take Meg for a run at Shell Mound, and savor another cozy evening together. She’d spend some time refreshing her memory of Dante’s Inferno, plunge through the depths of his hell and relish his escape at the end, and then they’d enjoy a relaxed trip home on Sunday.

  But before dawn Brandy jerked awake, shaking. She’d been fleeing some monstrous overhead shadow, battling wind and rain through a swamp, when her feet sunk, trapping her in muck. For a second she lay still, calming herself and recalling Marcia Water’s talk about a hurricane. Still shaking off the nightmare, she heard footsteps come up the back stairs. Someone unlocked the door, slipped into the rear hall, and a few minutes later, ran down again. A distant car door slammed. This hotel’s a regular Grand Central Station, she thought, and then remembered that Nathan Hunt, the Miami tourist, planned an early fishing expedition. Putting the nightmare and the hall noises out of her mind, she rolled over once more and slept.

  * * * *

  That same night about eleven Cara Waters climbed down from the cab of Truck’s pick-up to find Angus MacGill standing with her mother on their porch. With a preoccupied smile, he nodded to Cara, but she noticed that his eyes looked troubled.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” she said. She wanted time to prepare.

  Marcia stood very straight and crossed her lean arms over her chest, looking defiant, her voice strained. “Angus is just leaving.”

  After his car drew away from the curb, Cara expected her mother to speak to her about MacGill’s visit. But in the living room the older woman sank into a chair, her long fingers twisting a handkerchief. Then she rubbed her forehead, complained of a headache, and started toward her bedroom. Cara felt relieved. Her mind was filled with her own scheme. She had thought of little else since she talked to the reporter.

  In the hallway she quietly opened the closet door, reached into a corner, and drew out the lightweight tripod. Carrying it into her own room, she sat on the bed and listened to the older woman leave the bathroom, go into her bedroom, and shut the door. Cara would have to wait for her foster mother to settle down for the night.

  Lifting from a bookshelf her large volume of James Valentine’s Florida: Images of the Landscape, a prize she found in the Cedar Key bookstore, she studied the dazzling color photographs, all composed as skillfully as paintings. In a few minutes she set it back beside a book of black and white photographs made with a large format view camera. Instead of the career she dreamed of, perhaps as a free lance photographer or a professional employed by an important studio or publication, she was supposed to be content with the bird sanctuary, the art gallery, and waitress and cleaning jobs at the hotel. Yet she did not want to hurt her foster mother, not ever.

  At a window she knelt and peered into a dark sky lit by the full moon, enough light for her task. She picked up her canvas backpack, took the tripod, and fastened it to the metal frame. Next came her 35 mm. camera, already loaded with fast panchromatic film. She checked. Two exposures left. Her cramped darkroom in the kitchen pantry was not equipped to develop color film, and Cedar Key had no place to leave it. But later tonight she could drive to Chiefland and drop the roll at an all night drug store. It would only take an extra hour. That is, if she got a picture.

  Better not risk a flash. If she caught illegal hunters, they would see the light. With the fast film she could take a long exposure from a distance of perhaps forty feet. She wanted to be as far from her subject as possible. She grinned at the thought of exposing the so-called specter, but as long as she was alone and unarmed, she’d better be careful.

  Behind the bamboo fence the reporter’s dog woofed, probably at a possum. Perhaps the O’Bannon woman would help her. A reporter would have useful contacts. In the pockets of her backpack Cara placed a short telephoto lens, a zoom lens, and the cable release, then made sure she had an extra roll of film, batteries, and a small flashlight.

  Her lips were set, her eyes bright. If she could get a picture of the intruder, it would be in every newspaper in Central Florida. Just for making the attempt, she would be interviewed by the reporter, might even escape Cedar Key, might even get a job offer Marcia couldn’t ask her to refuse. She had studied every book on photography she could find. Now was the time to prove her ability, to earn the money for the Communication and Arts program at the University in Gainesville.

  For a moment Cara’s face clouded. Of course, she owed a greater debt to her foster parent than most daughters did to their true mothers. She could never forget that, but here was a chance to accomplish something on her own, something no one else had tried. She might catch in her lens the Ghost of Shell Mound. And if it was a hunter with a miner’s light on his cap or a ball of gas, so much the better. Marcia would then be proud of her.

  Cara had read fishermen’s accounts of the phantom for years—unsatisfactory descriptions of a white light that bounced among the trees, skittered across whole islands in a matter of minutes, and disappeared; of the school children frightened away from Shell Mound by a perfectly round light on a willowy body that vanished into the hole on Shell Mound. But she never saw any real evidence.

  Things were buried at Shell Mound, of course. That’s what such a midden was for. Once pottery shards, shell necklaces, perhaps the bones of early native Americans had lain there, but they were plundered long ago. Now it was illegal to dig at the site.

  She felt in the pockets of her jeans for her car keys. She would take the old station wagon and leave the panel truck. Marcia needed it for hauling injured birds and large pictures. She had thought of telling Truck about her plan after they stopped at the café on Second Street for coffee. But he seemed agitated about something he had heard in the lounge, something he would not discuss. Anyway, Truck’s main concern tonight was protecting his oyster beds from thieves. He would’ve made fun of her for trying to photograph a phantom. And he would certainly not help her escape Cedar Key.

  When she and Marcia worked the Shell Mound area at night, they had permission to leave their car in the safety of the campground. If the caretaker asked, she would say she was trying for another shot of the Great Horned owl that nested there, an excuse she knew she owed to Marcia.

  Adjusting the backpack comfortably on her shoulders, she bent down and lifted her plastic hiking boots out of the closet, tucked them under one arm, and opened her bedroom door. The space under Mar-cia’s door was dark. In her tennis shoes, Cara tiptoed across the hall, through the living room and dining areas, and out the kitchen door into the carport. Marcia would be more alarmed than Truck at the notion of Cara going out alone, even though they had squatted with a tripod together for hours among the moonlit pines and palmettos, hoping for a flash shot of the owl or a night-feeding heron.

  Cara stowed the backpack with her boots in the passenger seat of the station wagon, and putting the gears in neutral, pushed the car out of the driveway and into the silent street. As she finally started the engine, she checked her watch: twelve-fifteen.

  After rattling over the four bridges, she swung onto Route 347, past the pine tree farms to Shell Mound Road. No other cars passed her on that straight stretch of asphalt. She skirted Black Point Swamp, pulled around a chain barrier into the campground, and parked at a distance from the caretaker’s trailer.

  Once out of the station wagon, she opened the passenger door, hoisted the backpack again onto her shoulders, settled the wide, padded shoulder straps, and thrust her feet into her boots. An orange moon now rose high above the tattered scrub oaks of the park. The air felt moist and fresh, but she coul
d smell damp grasses and exposed soil. She locked the car, crossed the road, and found the narrow trail where the pavement ended. It forked off from a dirt road that ran under giant oaks toward the mound. Flicking on her flashlight, she peered again at her watch: one thirty-five.

  She set out on the woodland trail, over pine needles and leaves, between twisted oaks and stubby palmettos, around the swamp’s edge, breathing in the heavy odor of wet soil and decaying plants. Occasionally, the sandy ground gave way to saw grass and bare cypress trees. She thought of bobcats and rattlesnakes, but she counted on her footsteps to frighten them off. Her trek was not silent. Night insects twittered and whirred. From the marsh came the croak of frogs. Once an alligator bellowed.

  At last the trail inclined upward. She could make out the cluster of huge oaks that stood to the east of the mound, could feel the crunch of shells beneath her boots. She hiked up a rise. Before her lay a wide expanse of marsh grass, and beyond the tidal flats, the black waters of the Gulf. Heart knocking against her chest, she crept between two gnarled oaks and knelt beneath their twisted branches. Here she would wait, several feet above the road that curved around the hilltop. The mound was in full view, perhaps forty feet away, its half-buried shells white in the moonlight. She slipped behind a myrtle leaf holly, unfastened the tripod, and hid its slender legs among the prickly leaves. With shaky fingers, she mounted the camera, affixed the zoom lens, and screwed the six foot flexible cable release wire into the shutter release button.

  Then Cara dropped down on a bed of leaves. She felt safe. She could relax, hidden by saw palmettos and a veil of Spanish moss. Leaning her back against the rough tree trunk, she realized how tired she felt. A spot between her shoulder blades ached. Before her the Gulf lay still, the tropical storm hundreds of miles away. Far in the distance she heard the sound of a car’s engine. Just for a minute she would close her eyes and rest. Her head dropped, the woods around her faded away, and she dozed.

  In a rush she was alone again in the shadowy room she had visited so often in nightmares. Wind screamed outside, rattling the window. Rain pelted the glass. While she lay paralyzed with fear in the bed, she heard a shriek, heard something heavy fall, then a soft rhythmical thudding, again and again. She would be torn by the wind, helpless again in a huge, wet blackness, deserted, grieving for something irretrievably lost.

  Her head jerked, she trembled, and her eyes opened wide. Again she was under the tree. How much time had passed? The moon was lower in the western sky, but the soft, staccato thuds in her dream had not stopped. In a hollow beside the mound, next to a large cedar, she could see a dark figure bend and rise, a spade scooping, lifting, the sand falling with a soft rattle again and again. For a moment she panicked. People said that pirates had buried a chest here, had murdered the girl who saw them, and threw her body into the same pit. She stifled a cry, feeling a sudden affinity for that long ago, maybe mythical, girl.

  But this figure looked too solid; the noise of the shovel sounded too real. She steadied herself. Illegal treasure or artifact hunters, probably, she thought, modern pirates. She caught up the shutter release, with a trembling finger pushed the button, and counted thirty-five seconds. The film advanced with a quiet hum. Bracing one hand against the ground, she pushed herself into a crouch. Dry leaves rustled under her. The figure stopped, turned. She froze. She prayed she would be mistaken for a night animal.

  Her sight was partly blocked by shrubs and Spanish moss. She could not see the figure’s face, but the camera lens had a clear view, and above sailed a bright full moon. The head lifted, stared in her direction. She clicked the button again. That was what she’d come to do.

  CHAPTER 5

  When Brandy and John descended to the dining room for breakfast at eight, two other tables were occupied. Nathan Hunt’s slim figure bent over a plate of melon and eggs. He had either gone out in his boat very early, Brandy thought, or was starting late. Truck Thompson, still in black jacket and boots, had also come in for breakfast. He held a steaming cup of coffee level with his mustache, his face flushed and the corners of his mouth grim. In the lobby doorway stood Angus MacGill. The only missing member of last night’s group was Rossi.

  As Brandy and John took a table, Cara came swinging around the black screen from the kitchen, a tray of eggs and bacon shoulder high. As she set it down before Truck, she gave Brandy a knowing look. She wasn’t groomed with the care of yesterday, and the color in her dainty cheeks was pinker. “I was just telling Truck and Mr. MacGill about my excursion last night,” she said.

  Brandy laid down her menu and sighed. At least Cara seemed all right. “You didn’t go out to Shell Mound alone?”

  “Yes I did.” Cara’s glance swept over the others. “Brandy here’s a reporter. She says her paper would like a picture of the Shell Mound ghost.” Her brown eyes focused on Brandy, her eager voice rising. “I did get a shot of someone. It wasn’t a girl in a flowing gown. It sure wasn’t a hunter, either, unless he goes after game with a spade.”

  Truck glowered. “Had no damn luck myself. In my boat most of the night for nothing.”

  “Actually, then, I had better luck.”

  Brandy spoke up. “Did the person digging see you?”

  “Don’t think so. Heard me, I think, but probably thought I was a possum or a deer. I snapped two shots in good moonlight. At least one ought to get the face.”

  MacGill picked up his coffee from the side board and slid into a small table by the door. “A dig there’s illegal, mind. It’s a dicey business, taking a picture. Did Marcia approve?”

  Cara pulled her pad and pencil out of an apron pocket. “I didn’t tell her last night. I had to this morning, though. She heard me change clothes.”

  John and Brandy both ordered fruit and eggs. “And the photographs?” Brandy asked. “When will they be developed?” Maybe she could at least cobble together the Shell Mound story.

  “Dropped the film off in Chiefland. That’s why I was out so late. No place here to handle it.” She indicated Cedar Key’s backwardness with a shrug. “I can’t do color in my darkroom. The pictures will be ready Tuesday morning, right after I finish serving breakfast.” She picked up Nathan Hunt’s empty plate.

  “No mysterious round light?” Brandy asked, hopeful.

  “Sorry. But maybe I can prove who was digging at the mound. Might be a story in that.”

  John gave Brandy a righteous look. “I said the stunt would be dangerous. No telling who was fooling around the mound. You know we’ll be back in Gainesville by Tuesday.”

  Brandy glanced at him across the table. “I’d make a trip back to see a really interesting picture.”

  Hunt rose, picked up his Windbreaker, and looked at MacGill, who was cutting into a hard-boiled egg blanketed in sausage. “Sounds like we’ve all been out last night. I went after croakers and grunts early this morning myself. No luck. Going to try around the mouth of the Suwannee.”

  He had gone and John and Brandy were finishing breakfast when the breathless young desk clerk bobbed through the door. “It’s Mr. Rossi, sir,” she said to MacGill. “I can’t locate him anywhere. He’s just

  I”

  gone!

  MacGill’s square face darkened. “Without checking out?”

  She retreated a step. “Must’ve left, really early. His car’s not here and his door’s partly open.” Brandy remembered the footsteps on the back stairs and said a quiet, “Damn.” If Rossi was gone, her chance of covering the missing woman assignment was gone, too, as well as the ghost story, unless Cara’s picture exposed a hoax.

  Brandy and John followed MacGill upstairs. While John disappeared into their room to brush his teeth and collect the camera, Brandy stood at a discreet distance and watched MacGill open the investigator’s door. When he entered, she edged forward and peered inside. The closet door stood open, its hangers bare.

  The bed
covers were turned back and disheveled, although she could see no indentation in the pillow. On the bedside table MacGill discovered the room key. Under a water glass beside it lay several bills.

  The Scotsman pocketed the cash. “At least, he didn’t try to do the dirty. He got no calls before we closed up. None except the one at dinner.

  Brandy stepped into the room. “I heard someone in the hall after twelve. Then someone came in and left by the back stairs very early this morning. Maybe Rossi got news of the woman he’s looking for.”

  “How?” MacGill stooped over the waste basket, shook his head, and lifted out an empty Scotch bottle. “Looks like your man had one over the top before he left. He showed a taste for the stuff in the lounge. He’d hardly be fit to drive.”

  Cara, once more in jeans, slipped past John as he descended the stairs and appeared in the doorway. “I’ll clean the room. They don’t need me in the kitchen.” She favored Brandy with a warm smile.

  John would be waiting. “I hoped Mr. Rossi would contact me before he left town,” Brandy said to MacGill, then turned to Cara. “Before we pick up our dog for the day, we’re taking the historic driving tour. It includes the old cemetery. I’d like to see the grave you mentioned.” Maybe she could still make sense of all these fragments of information.