Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide (13 page)

“I thought maybe I’d go with Isabel.” He hesitated. “If Isabel would like me to.”

Isabel had begun to think Clem was pushing duty too far. There was no need for him to reawaken painful memories of his son’s death by going to the cemetery at all, and to go in the funeral director’s limousine seemed almost masochistic. On the other hand, he could be treating the occasion as a private rite of passage. She had protested enough. “I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll see you out there, then,” Eve said. She parted from them, and the driver ushered Isabel and Clem into the backseat of the limousine.

Isabel leaned against the soft gray upholstery. The air conditioner had kept the interior almost too cool. The driver stood outside, waiting for the coffin to be loaded into the hearse.

Clem touched her sleeve. “Hang in there,” he said.

“I’m all right.” Through the tinted glass, she watched the dispersing crowd. Some of them had come out to the trailer earlier and left food— baked ham and fried chicken, potato salad, mandarin orange and marshmallow salad, turnip greens, lemon meringue pie. There was no way Isabel could eat it all, but that wasn’t the point. They had brought it because that was part of what you did when somebody died.

“Are you really all right?” Clem asked.

She turned to look at him. His dark navy suit and tie accentuated his pallor. “What do you mean?”

“I get the feeling something is bothering you. Maybe I’m wrong.”

Isabel studied her folded hands in her lap, the weave of her dark gray skirt. “No. You’re not wrong.”

“Can you tell me what the problem is?”

Could she? Maybe it was time for a reality check. “I think there was something strange about Merriam’s… accident, or whatever it was. And her death.”

A crease appeared between his eyes and disappeared a second later. “Strange?”

“To be blunt about it, I think it’s possible somebody attacked her— and maybe even killed her.” Launched, she pressed on. The mysterious concussion, the man in the hood, the unlatched window screen. There was so little to tell, she had finished by the time the driver got in and eased the limousine into the street behind the hearse.

Clem listened without changing expression. When she stopped talking, he nodded gravely. “Isabel, everything you’ve said is logical, except for one thing— your opening premise. You’re saying somebody would want to kill Miss Merriam.”

“I know. I know.”

“I mean, people do atrocious things, and attacking a woman eighty-plus years old isn’t unheard-of, but she wasn’t robbed. Robbery’s the only motive I can think of.”

Isabel had been through this on her own already. “It could have been bad luck. Bad timing.”

“What do you mean?”

“She could’ve seen something she wasn’t supposed to. Blundered into something.” Faced with his opposition, she felt herself digging in her heels.

A flush had colored his cheekbones. “Something criminal, you mean? Keep in mind that this isn’t New York.”

“I’m not likely to forget it,” she snapped. “If you’ll do me a favor and consider the possibility that I could be right—”

“I
said
it was logical—”

“—then you’ll see it’s entirely possible Merriam found out something she wasn’t supposed to know and that she could have been in danger because of it.”

They glowered at one another. Clem said, “I’ll be willing to concede your point if you can tell me what you think she found out.”

“I don’t know, Clem.”

“Right.”

A few minutes later they passed under the wrought-iron entrance arch at the St. Elmo municipal cemetery. Across the expanse of tombstones, pine trees, and patchy grass, a green canopy marked the grave site. Clem was looking out the opposite window. When they got out of the limousine and walked across to the canopy, she didn’t take his arm.

The crowd at the burial was reduced in numbers from the church, the ceremony brief. Heat gathered under the canopy. Gnats danced in Isabel’s face.

Afterward, she was surrounded by people offering condolences. Bernice Chatham, in a black straw hat, pressed her hand and whispered, “I did my best. I couldn’t have done no more.”

As Isabel spoke with the mourners, she caught sight of Clem standing immobile at a grave not far away. She saw Eve come up to him and speak. Clem gave no indication of having heard. Eve put her hand on his arm. He jerked it out of her grasp, turned, and walked rapidly away from her toward the parked cars.

In a moment, Eve materialized at Isabel’s elbow. “Clem has to get to the office. He’s going back to town with me,” she said.

“All right.” Many people were leaving. When Isabel had a moment, she walked to the grave where Clem had been standing. The tombstone read,
EDWARD CLEMONS DAVENANT III
, and gave the boy’s birth and death dates. Underneath was carved,
“He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down.”

***

People stopped by the trailer all afternoon to pay their respects, and by the time the last visitor left it was late. Isabel kicked off her shoes, removed the suit jacket that had been roasting her all day, stepped out of her skirt, and peeled off her pantyhose.

Someone knocked at the door.

Cursing, she pulled on shorts and a shirt and yanked the door open, to find a short, sturdily built young man in a uniform standing by the step. He had a brush haircut, pimples dotting his chin, and a gun on his hip. He said, “Deputy Jones, Sheriff’s Department. I’m speaking to the residents in this immediate area about Buddy Burke. Do you know Buddy Burke at all?”

Buddy Burke. Kimmie Dee’s father, who was in jail. Kimmie Dee had written to him about boots, and Isabel mailed the letter. “I’ve never met him. I know his daughter.”

“He was incarcerated up in Tallahassee and he walked off from his work-release program,” the deputy said. “We’re asking folks around here to keep an eye out for him, since his family lives right over yonder.”

How terrible for Kimmie Dee. Isabel said, “Is he dangerous?”

“No, ma’am, we don’t think so.” The deputy seemed almost apologetic. “Matter of fact, they figure he’ll turn himself back in. Either that or show up here to see his family. It’s the first time he’s been sent away, and they reckon he got a little homesick.”

Isabel tried to remember what Kimmie Dee had said about her father’s crime. “He sold marijuana, is that right?”

The deputy nodded and shifted his weight so the gun on his hip jutted out. “That’s right. We got him for selling a couple of times, and then the Marine Patrol caught him hauling some in his boat. That’s when he had to go off for a while.”

The deputy turned to go. “You happen to see him, ma’am, you give us a call. All right?” With a bowlegged stride, he walked away up the drive.

Isabel closed the door. Everything seemed burdensome— the plates of food everywhere, her shoes in the middle of the floor, John James’s photograph and the bottle on the table beneath it, the grumbling air-conditioner. And now, Buddy Burke. She went into the bathroom, wet a washcloth, and pressed it against her face. When it was warm, she squeezed it out, wet it again, and went into the bedroom to lie down with the cloth draped over her eyes.

The trailer smelled like cigarette smoke, perspiring bodies, turnip greens. She thought of her apartment in New York, her cool, quaint aerie overlooking the leafy garden. She thought about Zan, her lost job, Chinese food. All of it seemed as insubstantial as a dream, and it modulated into one as she dozed off.

She woke half an hour later, only slightly refreshed. She was standing in the kitchen, contemplating which of her many home-cooked donations to choose for supper, when there was another knock at the door.

She answered. It was Harry Mercer.

To her great surprise, a tremor she could almost call happiness went through her. Harry was a person she had known a long time, a person who knew her. She said, “Harry, how good to see you.”

She couldn’t tell whether he was surprised at the warmth of her greeting. He said, “I had to stop by. I heard about Miss Merriam.”

She stood back. “Come in.”

Inside, he surveyed the array of covered dishes. “You think you got enough food here?”

She waved an arm toward the table. “Do you want something? I’ve got everything you can imagine.”

“You got Jell-O mold?”

“Yes.”

“Baked ham?”

“Yes.”

“Bean salad?”

“Of course.”

He gave her a shrewd look. “How about tuna casserole?”

“Oh, damn.” She picked up several lids and foil coverings. “No tuna casserole.”

“Then I’m not going to stay.”

“Come on, Harry. I’ve got fried chicken. And molasses-baked beans.”

“Well…”

She got out plates and cutlery and a couple of beers, and they served themselves and ate in the living room because there was no room on the table. Harry did not, she noted, pay special attention to the porcelain bottle. They talked about who had been at the funeral, and Isabel found herself musing aloud about Merriam.

“One of the hardest things is to realize that it’s over,” she said. “I won’t have any more chances to understand her, or to make her understand me.”

Harry shrugged. “Don’t go feeling too sorry about it. She gave you a real bad time. Gave
us
a bad time.”

Surprised at his bitter tone, Isabel said, “Yes, she did.”

“She used to make you cry, Isabel. Do you remember all that?”

“Yes.” Isabel put her plate aside. “I remember.” It was coming back. The way she had cried in Harry’s arms. She had never cried like that since.

Harry stood and took his plate to the kitchen. When he returned, he said, “I have to ask you, Isabel. I have to know why you ran off back then. Left the way you did.”

She had wondered what she might say. Clarity descended. “Ben was ready to take me away,” she said. “You weren’t.”

Isabel had met the man she ran away with, Airman First Class Ben Raboski, on a night when Harry came down with the flu and didn’t show up for choir practice, and therefore couldn’t be with Isabel afterward.

Isabel couldn’t go home early because any change in routine made Merriam suspicious. Instead, with a group of other choristers, Isabel had done yet another forbidden thing. She had ridden out to a teenage beach hangout called The Dunes, which had an open-air patio with a jukebox. Several young men from the nearby Air Force base, including Ben Raboski, were there, sitting at a broken-down picnic table at the edge of the pool of yellow light.

Ben was sharp-faced, reckless, northern. He had regulation-short black hair and brilliant blue eyes with curly lashes. When he sought Isabel out at the soft drink machine and asked her to dance, his voice had an exotic Yankee twang. Boys from the air base were dangerous, but Isabel said yes. It was a slow number, and as they danced, Isabel rigid in his arms, Ben said, “Relax. We’re only dancing.”

We’re only dancing.
Ben always claimed he had known from their first dance that Isabel wasn’t a virgin.

After that, she deceived both Merriam and Harry. Harry was faithful, familiar. Ben was the opposite, moody and unpredictable. Isabel wasn’t sure he ever thought about her when they weren’t together, so it came as a shock when he told her he was being transferred and suggested she go with him.

“I can’t do that.”

He leaned back and nodded. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

Isabel was insulted. “Why?”

He patted her knee. “Because you’re a good girl.”

His words filled her with rage and gloom. She hadn’t been a good girl in a long time. The question entered her head: Why pretend?

Why pretend? Why not cut loose?

It had come clear later that Ben had imagined himself to be doing her a favor out of the goodness of his heart. Considering consequences was not something Ben ever did. Ben loved excitement. He would liberate Isabel from her oppression with a fine, gentlemanly nonchalance. Ben did not love responsibility, but at that point responsibility was the last thing on anybody’s mind.

When she told Ben she would go with him, they had known each other a month at most.

Isabel had learned the magnitude of her mistake, but she had the Anders stubbornness. She had gone, she had had to scramble and struggle, but she wasn’t even about to come back.

“You should have asked me. I would’ve taken you away,” Harry said. He walked to the window and pushed the curtain back, staring out toward the house.

“I’m not sure you would’ve.”

He turned. “Why not?”

“Well—” She shrugged. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Harry said heavily. “Yeah. I’m still here.”

He came and sat beside her. “I’m still here,” he repeated. He slid his hand beneath her hair, caressing her neck.

She remembered the smell of his body, its contours beneath her hands. She remembered the silky, cushiony feel of his hair. His kisses were familiar, too— consoling, but with a driving undercurrent. Ever since she had seen him at the Beachcomber, she realized, she had felt its pull, as strong as ever.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the dispatcher said. “That case is still open and I’m not supposed to discuss it.” The dispatcher, a middle-aged woman with a pair of glasses on a chain around her neck, did sound, and look, regretful. The Marine Patrol substation in Westpoint consisted of one small room containing the switchboard, and a couple of small offices whose open doors revealed them to be empty. Back windows overlooked a dock. There was no higher authority on the premises to appeal to, and Isabel wouldn’t have known what appeal to make.

“Thanks anyway,” Isabel said. It had been a quixotic idea. She walked out to the waterfront lane that was the major thoroughfare of Westpoint.

The street was empty. She strolled back to the car, the morning sun warming her back. She had hoped the drive would give her some perspective— if not about what had happened to Merriam, then about what had happened with Harry.

Making love with Harry again was like being rocked by an explosion. Afterward, she had been wrung out and disoriented, but with a firm grasp on one crucial idea: This could not go on.

Harry was married. Isabel had gone that route with Zan and did not intend to travel it again. She had told Harry so before they got out of bed, but he hadn’t seemed to take her seriously. Since she had so obviously enjoyed being with him, she could understand his attitude.