“I hear you.”
“And I’m making sure the register is closed, you can bet on that one.”
We laughed.
I stayed at the Captain’s Room for another half hour or so, sipping my Metropolitan and thinking about the evening before me. I had an appointment with Samantha that night and knew I’d best start heading her way; plus, before I commenced my evening of spying on Drake, I wanted to see my son off on his date. This new era of him going to the movies with girls was a bit disturbing. I left Jesse a generous tip, thanked him again, and left the Captain’s Room.
It was a short five-minute walk back to my house. On my return there, I ran into Hot-rodder, who was pumping away on the pedals of his BMX bike. This time he didn’t stop and tore right past me.
“Word of the day!” he yelled.
I looked up at the dark army of clouds moving closer. Storm and rain looked to be only an hour or so away. “Cumulonimbus!”
“Cumulonimbus!” he cried back.
“The type of clouds you see in a thunderstorm!”
“Cumulonimbus!” he yelled again, turned a corner, and was gone.
I smiled. I don’t think that’s a word I’ve ever used in a novel or story I’ve written. I’m pretty sure that one came from a science class I took in college.
I passed several of our lost dog signs on my route home, and my heart sank even more in knowing how futile it had been to post them.
When I got home, Toby and my wife were on the couch, watching The Wizard of Oz and deep into their second bowls of ice cream. I could tell that the little guy had spent some time crying that evening—it came out in bursts when he thought of Bessie. His hair was disheveled and his eyes were glazed over, but the visual trip down the yellow brick road seemed to be getting his mind off things. My wife gave me a quick thumbs up when I walked into the room. I took that to mean he was doing better. Perhaps they’d had a good talk.
Owen was in the kitchen, eating a granola bar, and just about ready to head out of the house.
“How you guys getting to the movies?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m just gonna walk over to her house on the other side of Naples and pick her up. We’re gonna walk to the movies from there. It’s just over the big bridge.”
“You’re gonna walk? Have you looked at the sky? It’s gonna storm again tonight.”
He went on chewing his granola bar. He obviously hadn’t considered the weather. “I’m sure her parents will drive us back if we need them to.”
“That sounds good. Or call me, okay? I don’t want you to get sick out in the rain.”
“Okay,” he said with a slight roll of the eyes. It was strange; in the last few years, I’d seen him roll his eyes more times than I could count. It almost made we wonder if there was some kind of biological necessity for teenagers to do this; it made me thankful to still have Toby’s innocence. Things are so much easier when a bowl of ice cream and The Wizard of Oz can cure your child’s ills.
I wanted to say something more to him because I wasn’t sure how many actual dates Owen had gone on. I wasn’t even sure, in Owen’s mind, if this was a date. I had no idea how youth went about defining these things. It occurred to me that Madison and I really hadn’t ever sat down and had the whole birds-and-bees conversation. I guess we just chalked it up to the idea that he was a boy and he would pick up these things through osmosis. You can’t grow up and go through school without learning these things.
Maybe I had never taken it too seriously because my own parents never sat down to have the talk with me. It’s hard to sit down and do those kinds of things, I suppose, when you are beating each other up over a divorce and division of property. But standing there in the kitchen that day, I felt the impulse to tell him some things: Go out and have a good time, and remember, I’m way too young to be a grandfather. No, that wouldn’t do. Have a good time tonight, but remember, make sure the snake stays in the cave. Nope, that probably wouldn’t be very effective either.
So I gave up. I slapped him on the shoulder as I headed out of the kitchen. “Don’t forget to wear a condom tonight, okay?”
“What?”
I looked back at Owen, and just like the night before when he saw Mom and Dad getting frisky, he looked at me in complete disgust. I’d slipped.
“I meant jacket. Jacket, okay? It’s gonna get wet out there. Wear a jacket.”
“Okay, Dad,” Owen said, and with another roll of the eyes, he threw his granola wrapper in the trash and headed out of the kitchen. I couldn’t blame him. I leaned against the counter and gathered myself.
“Way to go, Dad,” I mused. “Way to go.”
I said goodbye to Madison and Toby, who were somewhere along the Yellow Brick Road and en route to Oz, grabbed my jacket—not a condom—and headed over to Samantha Wheeler’s house.
The sky had darkened and the winds had picked up, and even though I saw the dark storm clouds rolling in, the air was still hot and sticky. It was very humid. I’d brought the jacket to keep dry, not to keep warm. The storm would certainly be here in an hour, maybe two. I saw the flickering of lightning and heard the low growl of thunder. This front looked bigger than the previous night.
Crossing the bridge, I realized how vacant the canals seemed. Perhaps everyone could see another summer storm front moving in and had already taken shelter. No locals on stand-up paddleboards leisurely cruising through the water. No Duffys en route to anywhere. All was silent as the sun went down that night.
Samantha greeted me at her door. Wearing low-rise shorts and a red top that bared her midriff, I wondered if she had spent a little time in front of the mirror before I’d arrived. She looked good as always, but she looked like she had spent time and energy trying to look even better.
I’ll just say this: It worked.
“I talked to my husband,” she told me as I stepped inside her house. It occurred to me that I hadn’t told my wife that I was coming over here. “He said all of his tools should be in his shed. And the saws, especially. He says everything should be accounted for.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yep.”
She offered me a glass of wine and, being courteous, I accepted it. Something felt wrong about the whole situation, but all I needed was a glance at what Drake was doing and my job would be complete. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I knew that I would know when I discovered it.
We talked briefly and, before the rain came our way, I asked Samantha if I could go to her bedroom and look out the window. She agreed, and as we made our way toward the stairs, I noticed something on her dining room table: a very large bouquet of flowers that hadn’t been there earlier that morning. A handwritten note lay beside them. Samantha must have seen me look at them.
“My husband sent me the flowers,” she said as we ascended the flight of stairs. “His way of saying sorry for being gone so long. He thinks flowers can make up for not being here all the time. Sometimes I just wished they’d disappear and a real man would take their place.”
I sensed disappointment in her voice, but I didn’t say anything. I knew that even a mild attempt to comfort her could be misconstrued. It was weird enough walking into Samantha’s bedroom with a glass of wine in my hand.
She invited me to the window, and once there, I set my glass of wine on a small table beside the window and hunkered down close to the window sill. Samantha dimmed the lights. I cracked open the blinds and saw the storm drawing close. Brilliant flashes of light filled the sky. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Looking down, I could see Drake’s back porch light. Someone was moving around down there, but Samantha was right─it was difficult to see what was happening because of the tree. So I listened closely and fortunately, the window was already cracked open a little. I heard clanging and movement, but it sounded merely like someone was rifling through things in his garage.
I remained there, hunkered down beside the window, for several minutes. There was more rifling through the garage—
or more sorting through junk—for a while. I saw Drake’s shadowy figure move across his back patio a few times, but the tree made it really impossible to see what was happening. And then everything went quiet. The noise stopped completely. I wasn’t sure if he had gone inside his garage or gone back into his house, or if he was quietly standing on his back patio, working on something.
For many minutes I was still, crouched by the window. Samantha, standing behind me, interrupted the silence.
“Did he leave?” she asked.
“I have no idea. Hard to see or hear anything.”
“So what exactly are you looking for?” she asked and backed away a few steps to take a seat on the edge of her bed. “I’m still not exactly sure what you hope to find.”
“Neither am I,” I admitted. “Remember when we saw Drake get into that Duffy with his duffel bag last night? Who goes for a ride on a Duffy in a storm? And when he came back later, I noticed his duffel bag was empty. I don’t know. I guess I wondered if he might have something to do with my dog’s disappearance.”
I don’t think Samantha knew what to say to this. She nodded, sipping her wine.
“It’s probably stupidity on my part, I’m sure,” I said.
“Well, it is a strange house. Living there with his father, and you never see the father. My husband passed Drake once in front of the house and he thought he heard Drake mumbling to himself and cursing something under his breath as he passed. I don’t blame you for thinking it, Eddie. I don’t blame you at all.”
I waited there for another twenty minutes, making small talk, looking for a sign of anything on Drake’s back patio, and finally the storm hit us. The rain came down violently, and it was much worse than the night before. Much more rain. And unlike the previous night, the winds had picked up as well. I could hear it out there, wailing and pounding on the sides of the house.
It was my cue to leave. Nothing more was going to happen.
“Well, thank you very much for letting me come by and take a look,” I said, handing her back the glass of wine. She took it from me. I had only taken a few sips.
I began to make my way toward the door of the bedroom, and she stepped in front of me. Not forcefully, but clearly with purpose.
“Well, you don’t have to leave in such a rush,” she said, obviously taken by surprise at my sudden will to exit. Her hands crossed at her chest, a wine glass in each of them.
“Actually, I do. My wife thinks I went back to the Captain’s Room. I really should get going.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay and chat a little? I’d love the company.”
“Maybe another time,” I said, and right after the words escaped my lips, I deeply regretted saying it. Would that give her too much hope? Another time? Was there something suggestive in those words?
Before I had time to think about it, Samantha set her wineglasses down on her nightstand and approached me. She did look amazingly beautiful, I will say that. She touched my shoulder with her delicate hand and stroked my arm. I felt the pulse in my toes and fingers. These were uncharted waters for me, because somehow in all my years of marriage, I’d never been in a situation even remotely like this.
“You seem like a good man,” she said. She was still touching my shoulder. “You’ve done so well with your life, you love your kids, and you seem like such a kind person. I haven’t seen much of that lately. My husband’s never home, and all I have most of the time is this big empty house all to myself.”
“I see,” I said. For a brief moment her eyes flickered with hope. She wanted me to respond. This was a woman who craved the response of any man. I wondered what kind of father she had and could already guess the kind of man her husband was.
I took her hand, but only so I could remove it from my shoulder.
“If what you say about me is really true,” I told her, “then there’s something very important you should understand.”
“What is that?”
“Very simple. If I am as good a man as you say, then there’s probably one person most responsible for it: my wife. She’s the reason for all of it, Samantha, and I should probably get going.”
She nodded. I think she got the hint pretty clearly.
She sat down on the edge of her bed dejectedly, and I realized she really had thought I had some ulterior motive for this evening visit to her bedroom. And how could I blame her? I felt suddenly horrible for ever initiating this meeting and wanted out of her house as quickly as possible.
“I’ll see myself to the door,” I said, grabbed my jacket, and headed downstairs.
I looked at the dining room table and saw the flowers her husband had sent her. I felt bad for Samantha. Beneath it all was probably just a woman who really wanted her husband. I guess flowers can only do so much for so long. Maybe love and affection is just like food, and when deprived of it, even the best of people will seek it wherever it can be found.
Once outside, I zipped up my jacket and raced over the little bridge and toward my side of the canal. It was pouring buckets. That may be cliché, but that was what it felt like—buckets, barrels, and tubs of water pouring down from a dark army of clouds above. I crossed the bridge and trotted to the front door of my house. I tried to open the door but it was locked. I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t brought my keys.
I reached for the doorbell but happened to glance over one last time at Drake’s house and saw, to my amazement, Drake walk out of the front door of his house with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
I froze. My finger was just an inch away from the doorbell, but I didn’t press it.
Drake dashed through the rain toward his Duffy. He tossed his duffel bag into the back of the boat, got it ready, and then untied from the dock. Why was this guy going for another evening cruise in pouring rain? And why did he have a duffel bag with him yet again? Was someone else going to be roaming Naples tomorrow morning because their dog had gone missing?
Satanist, Marsha had said.
As he slowly pulled away from the dock, I wanted to follow him. But how could I? I couldn’t swim fast enough to keep up with him, but I desperately, desperately wanted to know where he was going and what he was doing.
Then I realized I could run alongside the canal and follow him.
“I’ve already made a fool of myself once tonight,” I said, ringing my own doorbell. “Why not do it again?”
Chapter Seven
“You’re doing what?” my wife asked me. Normally, she was the kind of person who thought spur-of-the-moment and spontaneous things were fun. She had an affinity for going against the grain and being a little crazy. But she didn’t get this at all. How could I blame her?
“I need my binoculars. I’m going to follow him.” I had already been to the garage to get them.
“You’re going right now?”
“Yes.”
“With your binoculars?”
“Yes?”
“Hmm. Bird watching in the storm, is that it?”
“No, I’m going to─”
“Peeping Tom, maybe? I know you have a thing for Marsha Walker but, come on now, how much did you have to drink at the Captain’s Room?”
“Maddie, I’m serious. I think this guy might have something to do with Bessie going missing. I’m just gonna follow at a safe distance. I just wanna know where he’s going. It could be someone else’s dog he’s taking tonight.”
Madison shook her head and laughed. She thought I was being silly. I briefly recounted what I had seen the previous night with the duffel bag and Drake’s strange voyage in the storm, and although it seemed to strike a nerve in her, she clearly thought I was taking this too far. Much too far. But my wife isn’t one to squelch a spontaneous impulse. In a way, I think she thought it would be amusing to watch me, a grown man, run through the rain with a pair of binoculars.
“Well, I hope you have a good excuse if the neighbors see you,” she said, and considering that somewhat of an approval, I raced outside.
/> Drake’s Duffy had already pulled away and was slowly making its way down the canal. I followed along the side of the canal and maintained a safe distance behind. I didn’t want Drake to catch sight of me following him.
We made several turns though the labyrinth of canals. Nobody in their right mind would be out for a ride in this storm. After a few zigzags through the canals, I was very uncomfortable and sopping wet. I began to wonder if this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Finally I saw Drake slow his Duffy beneath one of the many small bridges in the canals. The boat idled there. I crouched down behind some bushes, where I watched, waited, and wondered as the rain poured down on me. I used the binoculars to see what was happening.
Drake was standing in the Duffy and unzipping the duffel bag. He was putting something into it. No, he was taking something out of it. Then I saw something long, black, and shiny in his hand. I steadied the binoculars and tried to make sense of it. A rifle? That was certainly what it seemed to be. Was it a rifle?
“What?” I gasped, and my hands jerked the binoculars to the side. I lost him. Now I was looking at a boat along the side of the canal. Like a camera, I panned left until the Duffy was back in my double-O vision.
Drake climbed out from under the safe canopy of his Duffy and into the bow of his boat. But why? He wouldn’t get drenched, I suppose, because he was under the shelter of the little bridge, but what did he plan on doing? The duffel bag was slung over his shoulder.
I lost him again. The rain was pouring down so hard, it pushed my hands and binoculars down. I had to compensate. When I got him in my sights again, I saw him standing there, but he was looking up at the underside of the bridge. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but it seemed clear that he was looking for something.
That was when my binoculars gave out. They fogged, and the sights went completely gray. I couldn’t see a thing through them, and I realized that this set of binoculars, the same ones I’d bought right after college and kept around for all these years, probably weren’t nitrogen-filled waterproof binoculars. I was broke back then; I never would have opted for the expensive ones. I looked at Drake with my own eyes but couldn’t make out a thing of what was happening.
Storm Taken: A Supernatural Thriller Page 4
