Matecumbe (2 page)

Before she could even begin to embark with Cammie on what she feared would probably be a difficult manhunt, Melissa wanted to return, alone, to Islamorada, which was, without a doubt, her most favorite place in the world. Though she had traveled extensively with Brady throughout the most popular of Europe’s tourist centers—in England, France, Italy, and Greece—her visits to Islamorada generated the most cherished memories.

In fact, Melissa had journeyed to Islamorada even before she’d met Brady. During the spring vacation of her freshman year in college, she and three of her dormitory sisters had driven off to Islamorada on a day trip from their lodgings in Fort Lauderdale. She had come to escape then, too. The motel they were staying at in Fort Lauderdale was filled with a fraternity from the University of Michigan, which was fun at first. But two nights into their stay the police raided a party the boys were having in one of their rooms, and the whole gang was taken down to the local police station where they were all forced to spend the night. A calming junket to Islamorada was just what their frightened spirits needed before returning to college.

And with Brady, Melissa had come often to this ever-sunny, tropical isle. She suspected, however, that she enjoyed this peaceful hideaway much more than Brady did. The solitude of the island was at the core of its appeal to Melissa, and at this crucial juncture in her life, she knew that Islamorada would allow her some precious time to think. Melissa realized that she needed to be free from the distractions of the working world in order to refresh her battered soul.

She also wanted to be able to return home from this eight-day island vacation as an invigorated woman—ready to re-pursue her life’s dual goals of continued success as a reference librarian and happiness as a wife—the wife of an as-yet-unknown man who would love her for the remainder of their years together.

“The December sunshine in Florida will help my looks, too,” Melissa admitted. “I have a sexy figure, and I’m still thin—thanks to exercise, I guess. But a suntan always makes my face look just a trifle younger. And the younger I look, the younger the guys will be who’ll show an interest in me. I don’t want to get involved with a teenager, certainly, but I don’t want to attract the graybeards either.”

Melissa contented herself with the knowledge that she had always been a good-looking woman. Not as ravishing perhaps as the typical nighttime soap opera star, but close enough.

With deep-set brown eyes and pixie-like movements, despite her average height, Melissa Pienta had broken more than a few hearts in high school and college. Although she wasn’t as young and as fresh-faced as Cammie, she was far from old. And to her credit, she exuded the class of a mature, well-informed woman. It was her alert mind, and perhaps her high IQ, she concluded, that had convinced the scholarly Brady, many years ago, to ask for her hand in marriage.

Melissa knew that although Brady had an ultra-skinny, super-slight build, this absence of muscles did not detract from his being considered a handsome catch. His ready wit and the tender things he’d always say to her more than made up for his lack of brawn.

Unfortunately, just as he would always seem to become bored slightly with Islamorada after a few days of beach, water, and sun, Brady had, over the last few years, become bored with his Melissa.

“The excitement is gone from our marriage,” he’d told her, bluntly.

This boredom label that Brady had bestowed on her was the deepest hurt for Melissa. It was far from a kind comment, especially since Brady was keenly aware of Melissa’s constant battles with self-confidence.

Now he was involved with a bond trader on the New York Stock Exchange who also kept a weekend escape house outside of New Hope, Pennsylvania. I’m sure that she is anything but boring, Melissa thought to herself when the vision of Brady’s new love entered her mind.

With Brady gone, Melissa wondered what the next man in her life would look like—if there were to be a next man.

The sun had completely disappeared from the sky by the time Melissa had walked back to the tiny office of the Seascaper.

The town of Islamorada, as well as this beachfront motel, hadn’t changed much in the six years since she’d last visited. The general store with real pickle barrels was still a fixture, but it had competition now in the form of an ever-busy convenience store. A sprawling, three-story hotel and a drive-through hamburger emporium were also new. The town, though, if you could erase all traces of ocean, could pass for a sparsely populated hillside hamlet somewhere deep in West Virginia’s coal country—such were the buildings that sat alongside the oft-deserted main highway.

The rustic post office, the lone gas station, and the trailer park with the neon sign all flashed a time in history when America spun more to 45
R.P.M
. than to chic corporate culture.

Melissa was amused more than annoyed when she saw that the sign she’d read earlier was still posted on the door to the Seascaper’s office.

—
DON’T BE DOUR

BE BACK IN ONE HOUR

OUT FISHING FOR DINNER
—

Typical of this part of the world, Melissa thought. People in the Keys may be slackers, but they’re poetic slackers. They always seem to give business a backseat to the pleasures of everyday living.

Florida, she reasoned, could be just as laid back as California claims to be, but much more earthy.

All told, it had been an hour since she’d arrived here by rental car after flying non-stop from Philadelphia to Miami. The eighty-mile drive from the airport to Islamorada had tired her slightly, and Melissa wondered how much longer it would be before she could check in and take a much-needed, refreshing shower.

But resigned now to an even further wait, thanks to the desk clerk’s fishing expedition, she sat on the fender of her car for what turned into yet another half hour. Finally, after putting her now useless sunglasses on the car’s dashboard, Melissa decided to walk along the beach toward the eastern end of the Seascaper complex.

Although the weather was far from cold, the breezes from the Caribbean rippled coolly and crisply through the palm trees, whipping the giant fronds into a hushed tune that sounded like rain but wasn’t.

Melissa’s immediate goal was the pier that jutted out some two hundred feet from the beach toward the general direction of Cuba. She had fished on this pier with Brady, catching tiny, pastel-striped relatives of sea bass known as cowfish. The water in Islamorada was so clear that during daylight hours she remembered being able to look straight through to the bottom, watching the colorful underwater life swim by and seeing an occasional fish chance a nibble on a baited hook.

Nighttime, too, offered its sensual rewards. An evening walk to the end of the pier always seemed to put Melissa into oneness with nature. She guessed it was because she was standing, and breathing, in a spot where she shouldn’t be—two hundred feet offshore and, during high tide, only inches over the water line. Here, the moonlight brightening an ocean horizon was complemented by the sound of tiny, rippling waves.

It wasn’t until she had reached the end of the pier and was staring toward clouds and stars that Melissa realized how dark it really was. She might not have found the pier at all if she hadn’t known, in advance, where to look for it. The light-starved sky was certainly no help.

“Didn’t I see small, round lights out here last time?” she asked herself. “I seem to remember little yellow bulbs attached to the upper railings.”

Suddenly, Melissa’s attention was given to the sound of a motorboat. And though her eyes were getting accustomed to the dark, she could not see a craft of any size near the pier.

While the motor’s howl continued to increase at an alarming rate, she scanned in all directions, flipping her head from side-to-side as if it were the periscope of a submarine, but she could see nothing. Melissa was holding onto the railing in fright now, which would be to her benefit. The roaring sound had become unbearably loud.

She saw it an instant before it crashed into the center of the pier, halfway between her and the beach. The boat, like the pier, had no lights. It was a speedboat, about twenty feet long.

If Melissa hadn’t been gripping the railing, the force of the impact would have thrown her into the water. Still, the crash knocked her onto the flooring of the pier, toward the opposite railing some four feet away.

As she lay there, seemingly unharmed except for a wood-scraped left elbow, she saw what remained of the speedboat go up in flames.

Righting herself, she watched in horror as the burning boat cut out her only path back to shore.

Within seconds, the flames were shooting high into the air, illuminating the shoreline. Looking back toward the Seascaper, Melissa could tell that a small crowd had now begun to gather on the beach.

“Help! Help!” Melissa screamed, over and over, waving her arms. She stopped only when she realized she had been spotted, for some of those on shore were pointing back to her while others waved in recognition.

After about fifteen additional minutes of panic, worrying about the burning wood between her and safety and about whether the speedboat would explode, Melissa sighed in relief as she saw a rescue boat begin to approach. It looked like an abbreviated tugboat, wide and sturdy, complete with blinking red lights and a huge floodlight near the bow. At the same time, on the opposite side of the pier, a small fireboat appeared, hosing water on the flames.

There was only one passenger in the rescue boat, a tall man who may have seemed taller because he was standing behind a small steering wheel, which he maneuvered in front of him at thigh level. He was wearing a policeman’s jacket and slacks, a gun, and a grayish, western style hat with a huge star just above the brim. She had harbored a fear of policemen, especially southern policemen, since her college experience in Fort Lauderdale. But now, he was as welcome a sight to Melissa as John Wayne was to many a cinematic damsel. Instead of a white stallion, though, he had driven up at the helm of a police boat that seemed as brightly decorated as a Christmas tree.

“You all right, ma’am?” he queried, extending his arm, gently, to help her on board.

Melissa accepted the blanket he quickly offered, which she used to cover her now shivering shoulders. She was thankful that she was still wearing the warm winter suit she’d put on in Philadelphia for the plane ride south.

Melissa stared upward at his profile as he pointed the boat back toward land. His well-chiseled features, highlighted by the dying blaze, suggested a tough man, but his voice was compassionate.

“Were you a passenger on the boat that crashed, ma’am?” John Wayne asked her.

“No,” Melissa countered. “I’m Melissa Tomlinson. I’m a guest at the Seascaper.”

Officer Joe Carlton, as he’d soon introduced himself, docked the rescue boat and then drove Melissa to a medical center on the other side of town. She couldn’t help but notice the sparkling blue eyes of her rescuer when, in the emergency room, he smiled and said he’d wait for her while a doctor tended to her bruised elbow.

A friendly, slightly overweight physician checked her X-rays and told Melissa that she had no broken bones.

While she sat, feeling vulnerable, Melissa remembered her long-ago trips to doctors’ offices for treatment of her childhood asthma. On more than one occasion, Melissa’s mom would complain about a doctor being inattentive or in a hurry to finish a consultation.

Her mother was always doing verbal battle with the doctors who cared for Melissa and her sisters. Melissa remembered that her mom even considered writing a book called PATIENT OR PERSON—“about doctors who don’t listen sympathetically because they’re in a hurry to receive their money.”

After being treated and bandaged, and pronounced fit except for a few scratches, Melissa was back in Officer Carlton’s car, headed again for the Seascaper.

The calming combination of her slowly ebbing fright and the commanding presence of her handsome rescuer left Melissa temporarily mute. As well, an occasional drone from the vehicle’s siren seemed to discourage conversation.

“God, he’s good-looking,” she told herself. “He seems to be about my age, too.”

Despite her misgivings about policemen, her initial attraction to Officer Carlton was so strong that Melissa found herself wishing she could suddenly transform herself into a pert, cheerful debutante—and shed the disheveled, physically drained image she no doubt projected.

“When you rescued me, what made you ask if I were on the boat, Detective Carlton?” Melissa inquired, tentatively, addressing him with an incorrect title.

“Marijuana,” he answered, in what seemed like an affected southern drawl. “But just call me Joe. Everyone in Islamorada calls me Joe.

“By the way, I was just informed by police radio that the two fellows who were on that speedboat are dead. Their bodies were found a few minutes ago. Earlier, while you were being rescued, several bales of marijuana floated ashore. We assume that they flew out of the boat on impact. So, my original suspicion was that the impact also threw you—from the boat to the pier.

“I guess you’d like to be left off at the Seascaper office, so you can pick up your key,” Joe continued.

“Why, yes, but how did you . . .”

“I talked with the Seascaper folks while you were in the X-ray room. They told me you didn’t check in yet. But you are Melissa Tomlinson, like you said you were, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My Uncle Steve lives not far from Philly.”

“Oh, where?”

“Somerdale, New Jersey. Nice little town, but too cold for me this time of year.

“I’ll check up on you tomorrow, to see how you are,” Joe nodded, as he turned off his cruiser’s flashing light long enough to say good-bye.

“It probably won’t be easy for you, Ms. Tomlinson, but try to get some rest.”

The oftentimes-boring job she held as a secretary at the electric company paid most of her bills, but Mary Ann had to fight hard to stretch every penny. A typical weekday lunch consisted of coffee and a package of crackers—followed by a window-shopping stroll through the center of Pottstown.