Deadly Welcome

by John D. MacDonald

  “They still won’t sell any off, Judge?”

  He snorted with ancient fury. “Got all the money in the world. Don’t want more. Don’t give a damn the town is strangled. Can’t grow except to the east into the piney woods. Nobody’s going to come in here with big money and put up the kind of stuff that’ll bring the tourists and make the town grow, not with that little bitty piece of Gulf front that’s the only part them Jansons didn’t buy.”

  “Are you mayor now, Judge?”

  “Lord, boy, it’s been a mighty long time since I was mayor. Or anything else. I was on the County Commissioners a while, but it like to kill me running over to all those meetings in Davis all the time. Seventy-one-mile round trip to argue about if we should buy a two-bit record book. I couldn’t get no place political after Spence Larkin died. You know we were close, and just about anything he wanted to happen in this town, it happened. Anybody try to cross Spence and they’d find out he picked up their paper from the bank and he’d start in a-squeezing on them.”

  “When did he die, Judge?”

  “Let me look back now a minute. Yes, that was in nineteen and fifty. Seems he had a gut pain he didn’t pay enough attention to, and he finally went up to Tampa and they checked him over and said they wanted to operate. So he come back and he was busy as hell selling stuff and getting all his business stuff straightened away. And he went back up there and they operated and he up and died the next day. There was me and one or two others and his family that felt sorry about it, but the rest of the town went around sort of trying to hide a big grin. He was a man didn’t give a damn for making himself popular.”

  “Did Jenna get down for the funeral?”

  “Lordy, no. They never knew how to get hold of her fast. But she found out somehow and she was down here about two weeks later, storming around. Come in a great big car along with some funny-looking people. She’d done her hair red and she wore the tightest pants ever seen around here, son. Didn’t even stay over the night. Just found out from her folks that the will said she was to get one dollar, so damn if she didn’t go over there across the street to Wilson Willing’s office and collect the dollar and take off. Buddy Larkin didn’t make the funeral either. He was off there in Korea running up and down them hills with the marines. The only family here was Betty and her ma. Betty was seventeen then, thereabouts. Well, sir, old Angel Cobey, he was running the boat yard for the heirs, and when Buddy came back home it didn’t take him long to find out Angel was stealing the family blind. Buddy brought a marine pal of his back, name of Johnny Geer. So they pitched in and they did fair with it, but they didn’t begin to do real good until about fifty-four when Betty come home from college in Gainesville and pitched in too. Buddy is good on the mechanical end, but it’s Betty’s got more the head for business like Spence had. Of course their ma, Lila, she’s got no more head for business than a water turkey. Spence had left the business awful run down. He wasn’t interested in it. Now, Lordy, they get boats in there from all the way from Tarpon Springs to Marathon, boats where people want the work done right and done reasonable. They turned it into a corporation so Johnny Geer could get a piece of it, and they wrote Jenna to see if she wanted in and she said she didn’t want no gifts.”

  “Judge, I’m a little confused on this thing. What for would they want to run that boat yard? After what Mr. Larkin must have left?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what Spence left, son. He left that house on Grove Road all free and clear. And a thousand shares of bank stock you can’t sell and hasn’t paid a dividend in years. And a pretty good new Cadillac. You remember that was about the only thing he ever bought himself, a new car every year and run the living hell out of it. And about eleven thousand in cash. And the boat yard. Oh, and some little pieces of acreage. No-account land.”

  “Where did it all go anyhow?”

  He chuckled. “Good question, son. The tax folks would like to know too. By God, you never saw such digging. Like to tore up half the county looking for Spence’s money. Thought they were about to turn up an old coffee can with a million dollars in it. There’s some kind of tax action been dragging along in the courts.”

  “Do you think he hid the money, Judge?”

  “I know he had plenty that never showed up. The way I figure it, Spence wasn’t quite ready. He counted on some more time. But he got cut off too quick. Son, it was one hell of a funeral. About half of Tallahassee down here, and folks out of county government from all over hell and gone. Ole Spence had put the screws to most of them and the word was they come to make sure he was really dead. When they lowered the box, you could dang near hear the big sigh of relief. Me, I liked old Spence, mean as he was. You just had to understand him. His daddy fished commercial all his life and when they buried him they bought a used suit coat and a new necktie. And borrowed the white shirt. Spence and me were a pair of raggedy-ass kids in those days, and that didn’t bother me as much as it did him. It bothered him a lot. And so he spent his life correcting that state of affairs. And he was one hell of a lonely man the whole time. Seems like Jenna was the only thing really meant anything to him outside of the money. But she had that wildness in her. Got it from her grandma, Spence’s mother, I’d say. That woman kicked up her heels all over three counties afore work and kids ground her down. And the only kid lived to grow up was Spence.”

  “And then Jenna came back for the second time,” Alex said.

  “She surely did. Just about a year and a half ago, with her important husband in such bad shape they had to ambulance him from Tampa airport all the way down here. She’d been down ahead of him and rented the old Proctor cottage out on the beach and fixed it up some, and then went back and got him. It had been in the Davis Journal about her marrying him, but you couldn’t get folks around here to really believe it. But they believed it all right when she showed up, better than seven years after Spence passed away. Maybe she came back here to prove she’d done good. I don’t know. But she come back a lady, son. In dress and talk and manners. You never hear such gabbling and cackling as the women did. Said she looked hard in the face, but I couldn’t see it. She looked fine to me. Didn’t mix much, not with him so sick, but she saw a lot of Betty and Buddy and her ma. She was nursing that colonel back to health. And she kept it up about six months.”

  “I saw some of the newspaper stuff when she was killed, Judge. It sort of hinted she’d been living it up.”

  “Out of the clear blue she shows up one night over there in the Spanish Mackerel on Front Street, Harry Bann’s place. The Mack ain’t changed since you were here, son. It’s rough and tough most of the time, and gets worse when those people down to Bucket Bay come up to town to raise hell. So she had some drinks and she played the jook and the pinball and the bowling and didn’t leave until the bar closed and then she didn’t leave alone.”

  The judge winked ponderously and said, “There’s a lot of fellas around here in their thirties and early forties that first learned what makes the world go round from Jenna. And the pride in any man says that if he’s once bedded a woman he can do it again. And if it’s been a long time, he gets an itch to prove he’s the man he used to be. So while Jenna was being a lady, they were trying to edge in on her and getting no place at all. And when she stopped being a lady, they gathered around pawing the ground something fierce. It was like she stopped giving a damn. Find her in the Mack almost any night, sopping it up. Some army friend had drove their car down, a blue Olds, one of the small ones, and you could find it parked in front or out in that lot behind the place any time. Well, sir, after she got picked up for drunk driving, the colonel’s sister come down to take care of him, and I don’t guess Jenna and the sister got along so good. Buddy and Betty and Miz Larkin were trying to get Jenna straightened out again, but it was like the old days. She wouldn’t listen to nothing. She drove the car after they took away her license and she racked it up for fair. Chopped down a big old cabbage palm with it. Total loss. Then she took to disappearing two and three d
ays at a stretch. Come back hung over to rest up and start all over again.

  “Well, sir, that went on until last November on the twenty-first day, a Friday. Better to call it Saturday morning, I guess. She was in the Mack from maybe eight o’clock on. I stopped in and saw her. Just happened to see her. Bright yella slacks and a little white sweater, but both of them looking slept in, and her hair tangly, and no money so people were buying her drinks for her. There was always somebody around to buy Jenna a drink. They say Buddy came in about eleven to get her to go home. She didn’t have transportation. But she bad-mouthed him and he took off and left her there. But I guess you read all about it, son.”

  “I can’t remember it so good.”

  “Near as anybody can tell she left the place alone to walk back. It would be a mile, or a little better. And it would make easier walking on the beach than on that sand road. She left a little after two, and the one found her on the beach at daybreak, halfway home, was that crazy old Darcey woman that goes shelling at dawn every day of her life no matter what weather it is. Jenna was there, on her back, her head up the beach slope and her feet in the water. No rape or anything like that. Somebody had busted her a dandy on the jaw. It had chipped her teeth. And then they’d took hold of her by the throat and held on. I tell you it made one hell of a sight for that Darcey woman to come up on. You know something. She hasn’t acted half as crazy since then, and she hasn’t been shelling one time.

  “Well, sir, you never seen such a fuss as we had around here. Sheriff Roy Lawlor, he come over from Davis, and Parnell Lee, the State’s Attorney, he was here, and both of them acting like the one in charge. And there was some kind of special investigator down from Tallahassee. And we had reporters from as far off as Atlanta. More questions asked and picture-taking than you ever saw. For once the town was full up. They questioned the colonel’s sister and, when she finally let them, the colonel, but they’d both gone to bed early and anyway back then the colonel was still in no shape to go around killing anybody, even a little bit of a thing like Jenna. They questioned everybody lived on the beach which wasn’t many, and they locked up just about every customer the Mack had had that night. I guess it was all on account of that Colonel M’Gann being a sort of national figure and Jenna having been, in a manner of speaking, in show business. The papers really struggled keeping that story alive. Some smart fella with a long memory on a Miami paper, he dug around until he got hold of one of those art photography magazines from way back about forty-eight where dang near the whole issue was pictures of Jenna, naked as an egg. And there were a few of them you could just barely print in a family newspaper, like one of her holding a big black cat to kind of cut off the view. So those wire service people picked those up and as you know I guess there wasn’t a man in the country didn’t find out Jenna was built pretty good. You know, son, back when that magazine came out, while Spence was still alive, somebody from here found a copy on a stand over in Orlando, and he bought all they had and he went around and bought a lot more copies from other stands, and for a time there this town was full up with copies of that magazine. Then somebody sneaked one onto Spence’s desk over to the boat yard and why he didn’t fall over with a stroke I’ll never know.

  “Yes, sir, we had us a time last November. Cash registers ringing all over town. It’s a wonder the junior chamber didn’t try to set up a murder a week to keep things humming. The big shots just elbowed Donnie Capp out of the way. I don’t know if you remember him. He got himself a little shot up in the service and got doctored out in forty and three, and when he came back, Sheriff Roy Lawlor he made Donnie a deputy and he’s been that ever since. And Donnie takes care of this end of the county all by his own self. Knows every inch of it. He purely loves to beat heads. He had to sit way back while Lawlor and Lee were around here puffing out their chests.

  “But they couldn’t find out a thing and so it all kind of dwindled away. Jenna is planted right beside Spence. Wonder sometimes if they’ve had a chance to make up. Before she run off there was an outside chance Spence could have turned into a human being. But that tore the rag off the bush.” He sighed. “You get an old man to talking, son, and you’ve got yourself an all-day listening job. What you been doing all the time you’ve been gone?”

  “A couple of wars, Judge. And knocking around here and there. South America. Construction work. Decided maybe I’d come back and look around. Might settle here.”

  “Like I said, there’s no future here. Not in Ramona. The young folks leave fast as they can. Town gets older every year. The waters are about fished out. All the cypress has been logged out. The deer and the turkey are all gone. We got some retireds moving in. Folks that like it quiet and ain’t got much to do with. It’s quiet all right. Always had the idea I’d like to see some of the world. The furthest away place I ever did get to was Chicago, in nineteen and twenty-six when we made up a committee and went up to dicker with those Janson folks about the land. Scared hell out of me up there.”

  “Judge, are you still in the real-estate business?”

  “Not to strain me none. Got an office just around the corner on Gordon Street. Took a woman in with me, name of Myrtle Loveless. Got a lot of energy, Myrtle has. A Carolina woman that got her divorce down here and stayed on. She does most that has to be done.”

  “I think I’d like to rent a beach cottage.”

  “Good time to do it, son. Town folks don’t move out there until school’s over. Got a pretty good choice right now. You just go see Myrtle. Tell her you’re a friend of mine.”

  “I… I guess people are going to remember what happened when I left.”

  “Sure they’ll remember. There isn’t enough happens here to cloud up their minds. Most kids do fool things. Some folks will try to nasty things up for you. Do you care?”

  “I guess so, Judge.”

  “Nice to see you back home, son.”

  As Alex left Ducklin’s, turning toward Gordon Street, he saw a young man walking toward him, a slouching, swaggering kid of about twenty-three or four with red hair worn too long, a pinched, insolent face boiled red by the sun, faded jeans patched at the knees, a soiled white sport shirt. When the blue eyes stared at him in reckless, arrogant appraisal, Doyle felt his muscles tighten with ancient angers. And just as suddenly he realized that this could not be Gil Kemmer. He was too young to be Gil. But he was one of the Kemmers. One of the wild breed from Bucket Bay.

  The young man stopped in front of Alex and said, “Know you, don’t I?” There was a sharp reek of raw com.

  “I used to know Gil pretty well. I’m Alex Doyle.”

  “I’ll be damn. I’m Lee Kemmer. You and Gil used to pound on each other regular. You bust his wrist one time.”

  “He tried to cut me.”

  Lee Kemmer swayed in the sunlight, grinning in a knowing way. “Gil didn’t get the breaks they give you, Doyle. He drew four at Raiford. He’s been out a year, keeping his head down. He draws a little county time now and again on account of they pick on us Kemmers all the time. And need their damn road work done for free. This is a rough place for anybody likes a little fun. Let’s you and me go to the Mack and drink up some beer, Doyle.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got things to do.”

  “You still too good for the Kemmers?”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “If my brother couldn’t whip you, maybe I can. We’ll try that some time. I’ll tell Gil you’re back in town.”

  Doyle shrugged and stepped around him. When he looked back, Lee was still standing there, grinning at him.

  Alex walked to the real-estate office, a small place with a big window, a cluttered bulletin board, a wide hearty woman with black hair cut like a man’s sitting on the corner of a desk talking over the phone. She cupped her hand over the phone and said, “Have yourself a chair. Be through here in a minute. Now, Emily Ann, you’re jus’ not bein’ realistic, honey. No, I certainly don’t want you to give the lot away, but after all, honey, you’ve had it on the mar
ket three years and this is the first firm offer that’s come in, and I think it’s better to take it than keep paying taxes on that little old lot. All right, I’ll see if he’ll come up just a little bitty bit more. And let you know. ’By, honey.”

  She hung up and said, “Her husband’s been dead twenty years and he bought that lot for forty dollars and now she doesn’t want to sell it for twelve hundred. I’m Myrtle Loveless. Can I help you?”

  “Alex Doyle. The Judge says to see you about renting a beach cottage.”

  “I’ve got listings, but they’re kinda on the primitive side, Mr. Doyle. They…”

  “I used to live here. I know what they’re like. I’d want one for a month.”

  She opened a big key rack. A half hour later he paid her eighty dollars for a one-month rental, picked up groceries at the supermarket without seeing anyone he knew, and drove back on out to the Carney cottage on the beach. It was of weatherbeaten cypress and sat two feet off the ground on thick piers. There was a small living room with rattan furniture and a grass rug, a bedroom, a small and primitive kitchen in the rear with a very noisy refrigerator, an inside bath with tub, and an outside cold-water shower. On the front was a small screened porch with two chairs of corroded aluminum tubing and plastic webbing. The front porch was fifty feet from the high-tide line. He stowed his supplies, took a long swim and a cold shower, and then sat on the screened porch with a cheese sandwich and a bottle of milk, squinting through the white glare of the sand toward the deep blue of the early afternoon Gulf.