High Tide (23 page)

“If you break that, I'll kill you,” she said, pivoting, reaching again. The first night they were there a neighbor had served them the hated bran muffins but with an exquisite apple-plum marmalade. Fiona had liked it so much that she had nearly eaten the entire jar. The neighbor had told her that the little store carried it, but when Fiona had asked at the store, she was told that the manufacturer no longer made that particular flavor.

But here Ace had a jar that he was waving above her head. But not out of reach of Fiona's long arms. She stretched, grabbed his wrist, and pulled. When one hand couldn't bring his arm down, she latched on to his wrist with the other hand too. Then, to steady herself, she wrapped one leg about his and put all her effort into getting the jar from him.

Ace was laughing as Fiona was struggling against him.

“Oh, my, I can tell that you two really are newlyweds,” came a voice from the sliding glass doors that led from the kitchen to the pool.

As though they were naughty children caught in the act, both Ace and Fiona stopped their wrestle and turned to look at the woman. She was named Rose Childers, and she and her husband lived four doors away. On the first night they'd asked Ace and Fiona to “wife swap.” They called themselves “swingers.” “We're the last of a dying breed,” Rose had said.

Ace had mumbled, “Let's hope so,” and Fiona had kicked him under the table.

But now here Rose was standing in their kitchen, no knock, just opening the door and letting herself in. “Don't mind me,” she'd say when she walked into someone's house. “I used to live in a commune, and we never had locked doors. If we walked into something, you know, private, we usually just joined in.” After this oft-repeated statement, she'd laugh so hard she'd roll herself into a ball—a ball that usually found itself next to Ace.

“Don't mind me,” Rose said. “I just came to ask if Lennie and I could use your pool today. Ours is on the blink again, and the pool people can't come fix it until tomorrow.”

Straightening up, reluctantly moving away from each other, Ace set the jar of marmalade down on the counter, and Fiona walked to the table. She wanted to tell this awful woman to go away, but she and Ace were in too tenuous a situation to offend anyone. In spite of their fake names, they both knew that there were people in the community who knew who they were. But then there were a couple of people that Ace said he recognized from somewhere. Fiona had a
feeling that she and Ace weren't the only couple who never walked outside the gates of the compound.

So now they were faced with a day of Rose and Lennie using their pool. Maybe if the two old hippies didn't always swim in the nude, it wouldn't be so bad. But the thought of a day spent fending off the advances of two naked leeches was turning Fiona's stomach.

“Sure, Rose. We'd be glad to have you here,” Ace said cheerfully, and Fiona looked at him to see if he'd lost his mind. She very well knew that Ace couldn't stand the woman. “Truth is, the little lady and I are going out today.”

“Out?” Rose said sharply. “I thought you two couldn't—I mean, what's out there that you can't get in here?”

“Mothers,” Fiona said quickly. “Uh, I mean, my mother.”

Ace took Fiona's upper arms, her back to his front, and started leading her out of the kitchen. “My wife's mother is ill.”

“I thought you were an orphan.”

“Oh, no,” Fiona said airily. They were almost to the front door now. “I said that if I didn't visit my mother soon, I was going to be declared an orphan. You know how that is, don't you?” Rose said that long ago she'd given birth to three children, but she had no idea where they were now.

Ace picked up the car keys from the narrow table in the foyer, opened the door behind him, stepped out, pulling Fiona with him. Once outside, they started to run like schoolchildren about to get caught playing hooky. And once they were in the Jeep, they started laughing. When they reached the entrance gates, they laughed harder.

“We're going to get caught,” Fiona said. “We can't leave. We can't—Oh, the hell with it! That place is as much a
prison as prison is. ‘And do you remember the year 1978? My father said that was his favorite year. Maybe you knew my father? Smokey?'” Fiona mimicked herself. “Maybe we should give a square dance and make an announcement that we're on the run from the police and—”

“Hootenanny,” Ace said. “Not a square dance, a hootenanny.”

“Oh, right. And do we serve marijuana brownies?”

“I think the guy in the pink house makes LSD in his basement.”

“And the police are after
us,”
she said sarcastically, then looked out the window at the open highway they were on. “By the way, speaking of police and roadblocks and illegal acts, where are we going?”

“Where do you want to go?” he asked softly.

“Truth?”

“The whole truth,” he said, smiling at her.

Fiona turned away so she couldn't see that smile. Maybe they hadn't found out anything about who had killed Roy Hudson, but in the last three days she and Ace had found out a lot about each other. By necessity, they had had to stop bickering between themselves and work together to find clues to what had happened and what was going on now.

For three days, they had accepted nearly every invitation extended to them, and they had encouraged the people to talk about the “old days.” Unfortunately, this seemed to open floodgates, and in a mere three days, she and Ace had unintentionally started a sixties revival—and everyone knew that what people remembered as happening in the sixties had actually happened in the seventies.

So Fiona and Ace, as Gerri and Reid Hazlett, had been
bombarded with hippie nostalgia. There had been home movies, music (if she heard “can't get no satisfaction” one more time she was going to set fire to their headbands), food (which seemed to consist mainly of bran muffins), and reminiscences. Lots of stories were told with dreamy eyes about a time that the participants seemed to remember as ideal.

But, as far as Ace and Fiona could ascertain, not one of their neighbors had been in Florida in 1978. But then there were lapses in memory. “I was stoned that year and don't remember too much,” was a common reply to their queries.

And at night, finally alone in the cozy little house, she and Ace had discussed what they'd heard and been told. They compared notes about people and discussed what they did and did not believe.

“I thought she was lying too,” Fiona would say, agreeing with Ace.

It only took one day before they started finding out how alike their perceptions of people were. “Me too!” they often said, again in agreement.

So now, when Ace asked her where she wanted to go, all she could think of to say was,
With you. Anywhere you go, that's where I want to go too.

But she didn't say that.

“Let me guess,” he said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “Have your hair done? Nails? Waxing?”

“Ha!” she said. “Obviously you don't know anything about me. Not the real me.” There was a bit of a whine in her voice, and she could have kicked herself for it.

“Big city gal like you?” he asked. “Wasn't it you who just
a few days ago was mincing about in sand-filled shoes and complaining about Florida?”

She looked out the car window. “That seems like another person and another life,” she said softly, and the thought of the last days came back to her. What was going on at her office? No, not
her
office any longer. Now
the
office … and Kimberly belonged to someone else.

“So?” Ace said, interrupting her thoughts. “If you don't want to get hair removed, or cut, or curled, or colored, what
do
you want to do?”

“I want to work!” she spat out. “I'd like to do something other than listen to hippie stories. Or think about what happened when I was a kid. I'd like to … I don't know, design one of your crocodolls, maybe.”

“Really?” Ace said, turning to look at her in surprise. “I would have thought you'd be finished with that.”

“About as much as you're finished with looking at birds. And where
are
we going?”

“You better check the map on the backseat.”

Turning, Fiona leaned around the front seat to look in the back. There was no map anywhere, but there was a pair of high-powered binoculars sitting on top of a notebook, and beside them was a package wrapped in pink-and-white birthday paper, a pink ribbon about it.

“No map,” she said as she turned around, then waited for him to say something, but he didn't.

“I guess the notebook and the binoculars are for your bird-watching,” she said after a while.

“Mmmm,”
he answered.

For a moment she sat still, staring straight ahead. She was
not going to ask him who the gift was for. But maybe if she said something ordinary, like, “So whose birthday is it?” that would be all right. Pink paper usually meant a female. So who had Ace bought a birthday gift for? One of the women in the Blue Orchid? Surely he wasn't hot for a woman who had to be at least twenty years older than he was. Was he? Or was it business? But if he'd found out something, then why hadn't he told her?

Without thought for what she was doing, she doubled up her fist and smacked him on the shoulder.

Ace burst out laughing. “You lasted longer than I thought you would. It's for you.”

Part of her was annoyed that he knew she'd be eaten with curiosity, and another part of her was annoyed that he seemed to know her so well. Whatever, she was definitely annoyed with him.

But not enough not to grab the package and open it quickly. Inside was a sketch pad and a set of drawing pencils and a fat, soft, stretchy eraser. It was such a very personal gift, something that she wanted so much, something that was for her alone, that she could just look at it in wonder. Every man she'd ever known gave women either perfume or jewelry. Right now she'd rather have this sketch pad than the Hope Diamond.

“Come on, Burke, you aren't going to get maudlin on me now, are you?” he said, one eyebrow raised as he glanced at her.

He'd never called her that before. Truth was, he'd never called her any name except “Miss Burkenhalter.”

“So give me an idea about how I can make money for Kendrick Park.”

“What?” She had to work to haul herself back to the present.

“You owe me, remember? Remember the 'gator you broke?”

“Oh, yeah. I saved your life. I forgot that.”

He signaled, then turned left off the highway. “So save my park. When we get out of this mess, I'm going to need a way to make it pay. And you said that you could create a doll for my park.”

At the way he said, “When,” she had to turn away and look out the window. “When” they get out. “When” they can stop hiding. “When” they can again join the world.

“Well …” she said hesitantly, looking back at the sketch pad, running her hand over it.

“I see. You're a one-book author.”

“And so was Margaret Mitchell,” she shot back at him, making him laugh.

“So what would you do to market Kendrick Park? If it were yours, that is?”

“I'd …” She hesitated as she thought about his question. “I'd try to come up with something that kids would want and drive their parents crazy for but they could only get here, at the park. Kids are the true consumers of the world. Hook them when they're young and they'll get their parents to buy it for them, and when they're parents, they'll buy it for their own kids out of nostalgia.”

Ace gave a great sigh. “So maybe I could do some mechanical birds.”

She didn't seem to hear him. “You know, I've had some ideas over the years. I've often thought that if I had it to do again, I could create a doll that would knock Kimberly off the market.”

Ace pulled off the paved thoroughfare onto a gravel road.
“Don't tell me,” he said, “she turns into a blue heron at night?”

“No,” Fiona said slowly, thinking about the idea of a doll that would be connected to a bird sanctuary. “She owns the park, so she has to be a vet during the day and attend glamorous fund-raisers at night. She drives a Jeep and deals with poachers. Kimberly doesn't have any villains in her life. And Kimberly …”

“Kimberly what?” Ace said as he drove the Jeep into what looked like virgin swamp. But he must have known where he was going, because they didn't sink into water.

But at this point Fiona was only barely aware of where he was driving. When she spoke, her voice was hardly a whisper. “This doll is secretly in love with a man who can breathe underwater.” Her eyes were alight. “And when they get into jams, if her boyfriend is out of water too long, he dies.” She paused, then sighed. “No, no, been done. I'll have to think of something else.”

She looked up when Ace opened the car door for her, then reached out his hand to help her out.

Once outside the car, she glanced about her. “We're back at your park, aren't we?”

“I thought we could have a day out, a day away from
Raphael
and Roy Hudson, and anyone who can make a peace symbol. Okay with you?”

“You can watch birds, and I can sketch.”

“You don't like that,” he said flatly, and she could hear the disappointment in his voice.

“It's a great idea; it's just that …”

“Out with it, what's wrong?”

“Money. It would be enjoyable to fantasize about such a doll, but it would be just that, a fantasy.” She took a breath. “I told you: Starting such a doll would take millions. I would refuse to work on some cheap doll with oversized eyes. Only the best vinyl, the best clothes, the best …” She paused. “So why aren't you making fun of me?”

“Because it's not a bad idea. This place eats money. It would be nice to find a way to earn some back.” He paused. “Does Kimberly have her own TV show?”