Fallen Palm (Jesse McDermitt Series) (3 page)

Sunday afternoon, 10/23/2005

It was early afternoon and I hadn’t accomplished much of anything since waking with a hangover. I’d noticed that the engine on my skiff had a bit of a sputter while running at three quarter speed the day before, when I’d crossed Bahia Honda Channel. So I spent the afternoon rebuilding the Walbro carburetor on the 150 horsepower Yamaha outboard. I’d always liked working with my hands. It allowed my mind to wander, as my hands worked. I took the carb up onto the rear deck, where I had a large built-in wooden table. I used it as both a work bench and outdoor dining table. The rear deck overlooks the rest of the island. Last spring, I’d cleared a large area of sea grape, wild coffee, buttonwood scrubs and palmetto, in the middle of the island, with the crazy notion of growing some vegetables. After two weeks of cutting, digging, and scraping, I had a fairly round patch cleared that measured 150 feet across. I left a single coconut palm standing in the middle, it being one of only three coconut palms on the island. Reality sank in shortly afterwards, when I borrowed a tiller from a friend on Grassy Key and found out that the sandy soil on the surface was only a few inches deep and below it was limestone and ancient coral. Then there was the problem of irrigation. Salt water doesn’t help vegetables very much. I figured that maybe if I brought in a few thousand tons of rich topsoil, I might be able to make it work. Another project put on hold.

As I sat at the table, I looked out across the clearing and across the mangroves and gumbo limbo trees on the northeast side of the island, into the Gulf of Mexico. My island was just thirty feet off of Harbor Channel, which ran northeast to Turtlegrass Bank, then turned north in several natural cuts, leading to the deeper waters of the Gulf. I could see several pelicans diving on bait fish out there, just south of Upper Harbor Key. To the west, I could see a pair of herons wading through the shallows along Content Passage while several others sunned in the mangroves and banyans along eastern Content Key.

It was relaxing up here, away from all the distractions in the many towns and villages that make up the Keys. I didn’t really need a lot of human interaction and it seemed there were just more and more tourists down there, lately. A year ago, there was one human I enjoyed interacting with. Her name was Alex. We were only friends and occasional workout partners when I lived on my boat at Dockside. She was very striking in appearance, not what a lot of men would call beautiful, but I’d always found her attractive. Tall, with a swimmer’s broad shoulders, long blonde hair and a pretty face. She left last year. Flew back up to Oregon to take care of a sick brother.

I finished with the carb, finding only some gunk in the float bowl that seemed to cause it to stick a little and headed back down to the dock, to reinstall it on the engine. I was just putting the cover back on when I heard a whining sound coming from the southeast. I climbed back up to the deck to see out over the tree canopy and saw that a small, flats skiff was heading my way across the choppy water. I went inside and got my binoculars and trained them on the boat. After a few minutes, I could make out the driver’s auburn hair tied back, flying behind her and recognized the skiff as the one Rusty had bought a few months earlier. Julie was coming to see me? Not that she’d never been out here, she had. But the last time was more than six months ago, when she’d ferried out some oak lumber for me that Rusty had found at a yard sale on Duck Key. Rusty knew I’d want the lumber and sent Julie to deliver it.

I climbed back down to the docks and was waiting when she slowly made her way through the mangrove covered channel to my house. “Dammit, Jesse, you need to answer your phone. Dad’s been calling all morning and finally sent me way out here to check on you.”

“Sorry to waste your time, Jules. No idea where my phone is, probably here in the skiff.” I stepped over onto my own skiff and grabbed the line she tossed, tying it off it to a cleat on my skiff. Then I looked in the console and sure enough, my phone, right where it’d been for the last three days. I powered it up and saw that I had six missed calls, all but one from Rusty. The other was a Virginia area code, probably Deuce.

“Maybe you should invest in a radio, too. There’s a big storm coming. Guess you hadn’t heard about that?”

I took her hand and helped her step over onto my skiff, then onto the dock. She had a strong, firm, dry grip as always. Most self assured women did. “I have a radio, was just listening to a jazz station out of Miami, while I rebuilt my carburetor. I already guessed a storm was coming, just by looking at the water. How bad is it?”

“Remember that cat five storm that hit the Yucatan a few days ago? Well, it’s a cat three now and headed this way.” I looked out through the tunnel created by the trees hanging over the channel, at the water and up at the flag on my flagpole. The winds were out of the southeast and gusting to maybe fifteen knots. Why hadn’t I recognized it, I thought. All the signs were there and yes, I had heard about the storm hitting the Yucatan, while I was out on the water with the Ohioans just the day before. I’d assumed it would cross the Yucatan and head into the Gulf of Mexico, maybe threaten Texas or the other Gulf coast states.

“Hurricane Wilma? I thought for sure it’d continue straight into the Gulf. Where’s it located now?” I asked.

“It’s fifty miles northeast of the Yucatan and headed northeast now. It was downgraded to a cat two when it crossed the Yucatan, but it's gathering strength and headed our way. The Weather Channel says it will most likely pass north of here and make landfall again on the middle west coast of the state. Jesse, they’ve issued an evacuation.”

“Evacuation?” My mind was already moving toward preparations. “What’s Rusty’s plans? Never mind, he’s gonna ride it out, right. Those three Sailors we were drinking with, have you seen them around any today?”

“Yeah, they’re still around. The older one came by and asked for you. I just told him you were out here. Who were those guys? Every time I came by the table last night, y’all either stopped talking or started talking about something else.”

“Jules, I don’t know how much of our past your dad has ever shared with you, so let’s just say that those three guys picked up where we left off, okay. The less you know, the better.” I started toward a storage closet and to change the subject I said, “Do you have time to help me out here? We can go back to Marathon together. I just need to secure the house.”

“Sure, what do you want me to do?” she asked. I opened the storage closet and showed her the corrugated steel covers for the windows.

“Each of these panels fits over a certain window,” I said as I grabbed the first one. “The first one here, goes over the galley window. The others go over the other windows working your way around the house, clockwise. Each panel has holes four in it, see here? Each window has corresponding bolts, threaded into the wall studs, with nuts and washers on them. Just remove the nuts and washers, put the panel in place and put the nuts and washers back on. Shouldn’t take us more than a half hour.”

I was close, it only took twenty minutes. Julie is a fast learner and an even faster worker. She hung four of the panels to my three. Once we were done, we went down to the dock and I showed her the lift system I had installed. I untied her skiff and tied it off to the other dock, then lowered the cables at the stern of the skiff with a crank. The cables were connected to a three inch nylon strap. Then I went forward and lowered that lift, the same way. Julie looked up at the floor of the house and smiled. I took the starboard side and she went around to the other dock on the port side. Together we worked the straps under my skiff until they were in the right place. I showed her how the forward crank assembly worked and I went to the aft assembly. Usually, I’d do this myself, raising the bow about eight inches, then the stern, working back and forth. Together, we were able to raise the skiff, until the wind screen nearly touched the floor boards, in just a few minutes. It was now completely inside a box made of the very oak planks she’d brought out two years earlier. All that was left was to take the last large piece of corrugated steel and put it under the skiff and bolt it in place. I had two planks that fit across the railing of the two docks stored on a shelf. These allowed me to walk the piece of tin out to the middle and lift it in place, while Julie snugged the bolts.

“So, that’s what those heavy oak boards I brought out here were for. Pretty cool,” she said.

“Yep, my skiff’s completely protected now,” I replied. “I’ll be right back.” All that was left was to lock the doors and my little house would weather the storm with no problem. I ran back up, grabbed a “go bag” I always keep handy with several changes of clothes and a Sig Sauer 9 mm pistol in it, inside a waterproof box. Also, in the box were four magazines, loaded with Federal Hydra-Shok 147 grain ammo. I pulled a backpack out of the closet and stuffed it with a few other items I might need, and then ran back down the steps to the dock.

Julie already had the skiff untied and the engine idling, when I stepped aboard. “If you back out to starboard, there’s a turnaround I dug last month. No need to back all the way out the channel.”

Julie piloted the little skiff like a pro and within minutes we were up on plane and heading southeast. “The wind’s out of the southwest,” I said, “so maybe we ought to stay in the lee of Howe Key and Big Pine, then shoot down Bogie Channel to the Seven Mile Bridge, instead of going straight across open water to Marathon.”

“Yeah, that’s the way I came, but it was still pretty rough that first seven miles, running alongside the bridge. You think the storm will hit here?” She asked.

“There’s a chance, for sure. But, it’s too early to tell,” I replied. We rode in silence for a while. The wind was blowing clouds up from the southeast, which meant the storm was still well to the west and likely going to pass to the north. But still, there was a good bit of chop until we got to the lee side of Howe Key, but the sun was shining and we both just enjoyed the ride. The Content Keys are a small group of islands on the northeastern edge of the Lower Keys, an archipelago stretching from Key West to Big Pine Key in the shape of a slice of pie. The water all around this area is very shallow, with natural and man made channels cut through it. Very few of the more than seven hundred islands in the Lower Keys are inhabited. Mine has a population of just one, making it the most inhabited island for some distance around.

Passing between Cutoe Key and Howe Key, the water was only about two feet deep, so it was very calm. Cutoe Key is part of a group of islands that were once known as the Buttonwood Strips. Nobody knows exactly how it came to be called that, though. Both it and Howe Key, just to the west, are mangrove and palm covered islands, with no real beaches. Both are uninhabited even though they’re much larger than my little island. Howe Key’s interior is sandy, with nothing much growing there. South of these two islands are Annette Key, also uninhabited and Big Pine Key, home to about five thousand people and about eight hundred Key Deer. They’re really small compared to their White Tail cousins. A full grown buck is no bigger than a Labrador retriever. From there, all the way down to Spanish Harbor and the Seven Mile Bridge, it was fairly calm, so Julie opened up the big Johnson outboard. We skimmed across the flat water, with nothing but the sound of the engine and the spray of the water for distraction.

“Alex is in town,” Julie said. “She stopped by this morning. That was another reason dad was trying to reach you.”

Alex? Back in Marathon? We had actually gone out only a few times. I was still living aboard the
Revenge
before I built my stilt house. She was a flats fishing guide. A very good one, actually. She had a knack for putting anglers on fish, when every other guide in the Middle Keys was skunked. She came from a small town near Salem, Oregon, and was an accomplished fly fisherman there. She’d come to the Keys to try her hand at bone fishing, fallen in love with the place and stayed on. She had her only sibling, a brother six years younger, sell her house for her.

Their parents had been killed in a car wreck when she was just twenty three and she’d taken over as his guardian, getting him through high school and into college. She’d pushed him hard and he’d graduated with an MBA in just five years and opened his own accounting firm.

Three years later, just a year after she came to the Keys, her brother was diagnosed with cancer and she had to go home to care for him while he was undergoing treatment. We hadn’t been real seriously involved, or so I thought, but it was heart breaking to watch her walk out of my life. Hard to explain since we hadn’t even spent the night together. We worked out every Tuesday and Thursday morning, either running or swimming in the ocean. She even got me to go to the local gym a few times. We talked on the phone occasionally after she left, but I was never big on phone calls so they dwindled down to almost nothing. Things just devolved over time. But with every woman I'd met in the past year, I subconsciously compared to them to Alex and they all fell far short. Mostly, I just stayed at my little house, working on clearing the island of dead wood and trash.

“She say how long she was going to be in town?” I asked, trying not to show any emotion.

“She didn’t say. I was busy and dad talked to her, while I was working. He didn’t say anything else, but to let you know she was here.” We rode on in silence, between Howe Key and Annette Key, then into the lee of Big Pine Key, as my mind drifted back in time.

August, 2003

It was just a little over two years ago, middle of the summer and I was broke down on the side of A-1-A again, just south of Duck Key. My old Travelall was showing me it’s weekly stubborn side, once again. If it wasn’t a clogged fuel filter, it was the air filter, or the glow plugs, or a million other problems that old truck would throw at me. If being stranded on the side of the road wasn’t depressing enough, it was pouring rain on a hot and muggy August afternoon and I was soaking wet. I’d seen Alex around the island a few times, but we’d never met. She was tall and beautiful, with shoulder length, thick, blonde hair, usually pulled back, or tucked under a long billed fishing cap. Whenever I’d seen her, she was wearing khaki pants or shorts with a long sleeved, over sized shirt. But, even dressed like that, she was clearly quite a beautiful woman. So, when she stopped next to my truck and I glanced over from my vantage point under the hood, all I saw was a bright yellow Jeep Cherokee, and a blonde driver, wearing a crisp blue sundress, with her hair shining like a July sun. I didn’t even recognize her.

“Car trouble?” she asked with a smile after the passenger side window came about half way down. I studied her face and it took me a few seconds before I recognized her. There I was, rain pouring down, soaked to the bone, covered in grease, feeling totally vulnerable. I just stood there, water pouring off my brow; mouth hung open and didn’t say anything.

I finally snapped out of it and said, “Uh, yeah. Truck won’t crank. I think the battery's dead.” Smart come back there, McDermitt.

“Give you a lift somewhere, Jesse?” she asked.

Huh? She knows my name? A lift? Yeah, I needed a lift. I’m soaked and covered in grease. I’m standing there with my mouth hanging open again. She said my name. How’d she know my name?

“Uh, yeah. But I’m a little wet and dirty,” I replied. Oh yeah, real suave, McDermitt.

“We all get that way sometimes,” she laughed. “Get in, before I change my mind.” It was a great laugh. Not a little princess giggle, but a hearty, genuine, belly laugh. Then, the words she’d actually said got through my fog addled brain. We all get wet and dirty sometimes? Was there something to that? No, couldn’t be.

I climbed into her Jeep and ratcheted the seat all the way back, to keep my knees off the dash. She reached in back and handed me a towel. Drying my face, I asked, “How’d you know my name? Have we met?”

“It’s a small island, Jesse. I asked around about you and that big Rampage of yours,” she replied. Asked around? About me? Hmm, an honest, direct answer to a simple question, I thought. I like that. “Do you have a destination in mind, or do you just want to sit here, dripping water in my floor boards?” Again, with that hearty laugh.

“Yeah, um, if you could drop me at my boat, over at Dockside, that’d be great. Guess I’ll wait out this rain and get my friend Rusty to bring me back, after the engine’s cooled. I think it’s just a case of vapor lock. That’s where…”

She pulled off the shoulder suddenly and did a sharp u-turn and started driving south, toward Dockside, interrupting me and completing my explanation, “Where air bubbles form in the fuel line, when it gets hot, like today.” Okay, she knows a little about engines, I thought. “Or,” she continued, “it could be a clog in the fuel return line to the tank. That’d mimic a vapor lock problem. Has it done this before?” Okay, she knows a lot about engines.

“Only about every other day or so,” I replied. I looked over at her, as she drove. She must have been coming or going to a lunch date, or something. She wore a blue, print sundress, with thin straps and what looked like pale blue and yellow flowers all over it. Bare, smooth, tanned legs and a pair of blue flat heeled shoes. Her blonde hair was styled, but not overly so, just a little wave in it and she wore no makeup, except maybe some lip gloss. A far cry from the woman I’d seen around the docks and on the flats, who was purported to be one of the best fishing guides around. She smelled faintly of jasmine and soap. Nothing overbearing, just a hint, probably not perfume, but more likely the shampoo she used.

“You should get rid of that beast and buy something built in this century maybe. At least in the last quarter century,” she laughed again. “Hey, reach back there and grab me a beer, would you? Get two, if it’s not too early for you.”

I looked in back and there was a small fiberglass boat cooler. I reached in and felt around through the ice and pulled out two icy cold bottles of Hatuey. “Thanks for the beer,” I said, as I twisted the top off and handed her one. “Beast, huh? Seems a fitting moniker for that old truck. I really don’t need a truck and it’d be a waste of money to buy anything newer, as little as I drive it. Besides, it’s kind of like me, old and cantankerous at times. Usually, if it won’t start, I can just walk to wherever I'm going, or take my skiff. But today I was going up to Long Key to look at some new Fin-Nor reels a guy up there just got in. Guess that’ll have to wait for another day, now.”

“My client for the afternoon canceled because of the rain,” she said. “I just came from meeting my attorney and I don’t have anything else to do today. If you want, we could stop by my place on Key Colony Beach and I could change and take you to Long Key. I’ve wanted to look at some new tackle myself.”

“I couldn’t put you out like that,” I said. Besides, I don’t even know your name, I was thinking. I was really hoping she was serious, though. I could listen to her laugh all day long.

As if reading my thoughts she said, “I’m Alex, short for Alexis, but nobody calls me that. Really, I’m serious. This rain’s not going to stop any time soon and since my client canceled, I have absolutely nothing else to do today. And I really do need to replace one of my fly rods and I should add a few different spinning rods and reels, too. You know, expand my abilities. I’m a fishing guide myself.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned into the Winn-Dixie parking lot, turned around again and started driving north, toward Key Colony Beach. I like a woman who’s strong and decisive and this lady was a real take charge kind of woman. Knowing that against a strong willed woman like this, arguing would be pointless, not that I wanted to anyway, I said, “Well, if you’re sure, I’d enjoy the company.”

Five minutes later, we turned into the Sunset Beach Apartment complex on Key Colony Beach. As we ran toward the overhang to get out of the rain, she said, “I have some shirts that will fit you, but I don’t think you can get into my jeans.” She laughed again, all the way to the door of her apartment. I was somewhat dry now. Well, at least I wasn’t dripping on the floor and laughed with her. She disappeared down the hall and came back a minute later with a well worn, long sleeved, denim shirt. “Give me five minutes,” she said and disappeared down the hall again. I pulled my tee shirt off, looked around and just deposited it in a trash can in the kitchen, then pulled on the denim shirt she’d given me. It smelled faintly of clean girl smell. I looked around the living room. It was functional, not at all girly or anything. There were three fly rods supported on hangers along one wall, a fly tying table and chair were under the window with several boxes of small hooks and assorted pieces of cloth and feathers. I found a few pictures on a bookcase. Her, several years younger, standing with a teenaged boy and an older couple. Family picture, maybe? Several pictures of her, fly rod in one hand, holding a trout in the other, with mountains in the background. There was another of her with the teenaged boy, probably taken a few years later, as he had a moustache in this one. She was wearing a black skirt and white blouse, with her hair longer. He was wearing the cap and gown of a graduate and she had a very proud smile on her face.

“My little brother, Mark,” she said from behind me. Her sudden appearance startled me a bit, as I didn’t hear the slightest sound. “That was his college graduation. Our folks died when he was seventeen and I took over, helping him get through those tough years.”

“I can see the resemblance,” I said, noting the tall young man in the picture, with the same blonde hair and high cheek bones of his sister. “Sorry about your folks.”

“Shall we go shopping?” she asked. And without waiting for a reply, she was heading toward the door. She’d changed into more comfortable clothes, I’d noticed. A pair of khaki fishing shorts and a baggy, short sleeved guayabera shirt, in light blue and her usual long billed fisherman’s cap.