Florida Heatwave (40 page)

Movement caught her attention. On the far side of the highway walked a man in a long coat and a narrow-brimmed hat. He stopped when he was directly opposite her and turned to stare. He couldn’t see her. She was safe in the darkness, but she didn’t feel safe. His gaze seemed to bore into her, drilling into the bone and nerves of her spine and leaving her body numb and unresponsive. He turned away and kept walking.

When he was gone, Kit rushed back into the apartment and locked the door. It was a flimsy latch that even a kid could push through. Pete was right. She’d call the landlord when it was daylight.

She closed the kitchen window. Instead of going back to bed, she went to the hallway and sat beside the phone, not touching it, but afraid to look away.

Pete was waiting for her in his car when she went outside. “How about some breakfast?” he asked.

“I don’t eat breakfast.” But her heart wasn’t in the disclaimer. She was glad to see him. Glad to know that someone bothered to check on her.

“I do. It’s a bad habit I started when I wanted to grow tall enough to be a ball player.”

She opened the door and got in, not waiting for his assistance. “Well, it worked. Maybe I should have eaten more.”

He laughed, and she liked the way he did so without holding back. “That’s a thought, Minnow. With more nutrition you might have been Bream.”

She was both pleased and annoyed. “Who’ve you been talking to?”

“Mostly Amy. Chuck, too. They both seem fond of you, and they’re both worried about you.”

“I’m worried, too,” she said almost under her breath.

“Something happen?” he asked.

She told him about the phone call and the man walking. “No one walks along the highway there. It’s suicidal.”

“You think he was watching you?”

“Yes.” The iron taste of blood touched her tongue. Her teeth had pierced her lip, a bad habit she thought she’d broken. When she was little and her mother had beaten her with a hairbrush, she’d bitten her lip to keep from crying. The end result was that her mother only beat her harder and she had tiny lumps of scar tissue on the inside of her mouth.

“You want to go to the police station and make a report?” he asked.

She shook her head. “They don’t take these things seriously. Some of the other girls.” Each year there was at least one guy whose infatuation with a Garden girl turned ugly. The police acted like the girls brought it on themselves.

They pulled into Jolene’s Diner, and Kit settled into a booth. When Pete ordered an omelet for her, she didn’t say anything, just sipped the hot, strong coffee that the waitress produced.

“I’m glad you’re not mad at me anymore,” Pete said.

She shrugged. She wasn’t sure if she was mad or not, only that she was relieved not to be alone.

“Will you talk to me about Jess?”

“Okay.” What did she have to lose? He’d played her about the news story, but wasn’t that his job?

She told him about the expensive flowers, the telephoned instructions of places to meet, the excitement of the secrecy, and Jess’s belief that her honey man had set up the deal with the MGM scout. “I was so envious,” Kit concluded. “She had everything I wanted. Attention. Potential. Things were happening for her.”

“All benefits of a powerful lover. Did you want that, too?” Pete asked.

Her laugh was rueful. “No. I didn’t envy that. Jess believed she’d always control him. That he couldn’t do without her. I told her she had six weeks, max. Probably less. Girls, for a man like him, are a dime a dozen. That’s why, when she disappeared, I thought she’d gone off to Hollywood. That she knew, like I did, that she had to take what he offered then. Otherwise it would all be a mirage.”

“You sound like you two were close.”

“Jess wasn’t close to anyone really. I guess you could say she talked to me more than anyone else, but we weren’t best friends.”

The waitress cleared the breakfast dishes and refreshed their coffee. Pete sat back in the booth. Even though she’d given him what he wanted, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave.

“She never said his name?” Pete asked.

“No. She was careful.”

Pete flipped his notebook closed.

“She said things to confuse the issue. Like he was in Washington, and then he would be in Tallahassee, like we were too stupid to figure if he was state or national. I graduated high school, and I got an A in civics. When she said he helped the president build up Eglin Air Force Base, I knew he was a US congressman.”

“Did she hint at who it might be? Maybe we could put it together.”

She found her lip between her teeth again and released it. “I don’t want to know who she was seeing. You figure it out. I need to get to the Gardens. Kenny will drill us this morning. We’ve got to come up with a plan without Mel. He was the strongest guy in the pyramid.”

“I checked at the hospital. The doc said he only bruised his neck. He’ll be good as new in a week.”

“That’s a relief.” Kit discreetly opened her compact beneath the table and checked her lipstick.

“Kit, would you have dinner with me tonight?” Pete asked.

“I’ve told you everything I know. No point spending more money on food for me.”

“Not for a story. Just for … pleasure.” When he really smiled he had crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. He was older than she’d first thought. Maybe thirty-five. Closer to her mother’s age than her own. Where her mother was old, though, Pete was mature.

“Okay,” she said.

“How about Pelican Point?”

She frowned. “That’s a long way to drive for dinner.”

“I might get a story out of it. You know, colorful local joint, out of the way. Newspaper readers eat that kind of stuff up so they can pretend to be in the know about all the righteous places.” He lifted his chin a fraction. “I hear some movie stars hang out there after visiting that spiritual place, Cassadaga. Say, now, that would be a story. You could have your fortune told, and I could do a story about that. I’ve got a camera in the car. Take a picture having your palm read or whatever they do. I feel bad that I led you on about the other story. This one I could do legitimately. You’re a pretty girl, no telling who might see the story.”

Kit thought about what Kenny would say if she ditched drill practice. He’d be furious, but there would never be a better chance than now. She’d discovered a dead body. If she acted a little strange, folks would expect nothing less. Kenny would get over being mad. “Okay. But I’d better not go in to work at all or I won’t be able to get away.”

“So we’ll have the whole day?”

“Yeah.” She pulled her coffee cup toward her and stared into the black depths. Her own distorted reflection stared back.

Pete was patient while she changed into her favorite short set and her white sandals. They had two-inch heels and made her legs look longer. She wasn’t certain how she felt about having her photograph made for the newspaper with a fortune-teller. Her mother would have a conniption. The bitch was always so worried about what the neighbors would think, and consorting with fortune-tellers was considered by some of her mother’s Catholic friends as having truck with Satan. Still, she got in the car with Pete and they headed northeast to the small village.

“What will you do when you get tired of being the top of the pyramid at Cypress Gardens?” Pete asked her.

“I don’t know.” The plastic seat cover on the car was making the backs of her legs sweat. She wished she’d thought to bring a towel.

“A girl like you, I figured you’d have a plan.”

“A girl like me can’t afford big plans.” She kept her gaze out the window. “I guess maybe I’ll marry and settle down. Maybe work in a dress shop or cosmetic counter. I’d be good at that.”

“You would.” He watched the road but glanced her way occasionally. “You want children?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes. Mostly not. I don’t want to wake up and find I’ve turned into my mother.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Let’s just say Annie had a better time at the orphanage than I did growing up with her. She beat the hell out of me every chance she got, and when she wasn’t whaling on me, she was drunk.”

He didn’t speak or look her way. She regretted telling him so much. The past was over and done. Now she’d let the stink of it catch up to her. “What about you?” she asked. “Smart guy like you must’ve had parents who were proud.”

“Things were okay for me.”

“Listen, maybe we could skip the fortune-telling thing. My mom will have a fit about it. Let’s just have something to eat, okay?” She was worried she’d piss him off.

“If that’s what you’d like. I didn’t have the impression, though, that you saw much of your mom.”

She laughed, and the harsh sound of it made him turn to her. “I haven’t heard from her in eight months. But sure as I got in the newspaper, she’d find a reason to be upset about it.”

“Well, today’s your day.” He drove for a while before he spoke again. “There’s a ghost town in the Ocala State Park. Kerr City. Want to grab a picnic lunch somewhere and take a ride through the park?”

“That would be fun.”

“There’s bound to be a diner before long. We’ll get something and get them to pack it up for us.”

“Do you mind if I play the radio?” she asked.

“Don’t know if there’s a station we can pick up, but give it your best shot.”

The staticky strains of a Hank Williams song filtered out of the radio and Kit sat back. She was too self-conscious to sing along, like she would have done if she’d been alone. But it was good, sharing the road with Pete Paladin. Maybe they wouldn’t go back to Cypress Gardens. Maybe her life had taken a turn.

Pete stopped at a diner and got fried chicken and cathead biscuits for the picnic, then hit a liquor store and got a bottle of wine. When they drove into the state park, Kit felt as if the real world fell away. Pete turned down a sandy road that took them deep into the heart of the park. When they were off the main road, he stopped long enough to open the wine and pour them both paper cups full.

The sun filtered through the dense pines, and Kit felt a lethargy settle into her limbs. “Not a lot of traffic here. Maybe we should look for the picnic tables,” she said. She wasn’t nervous, just aware of the isolation. When she looked at Pete, her stomach tightened pleasantly. He hadn’t made a single advance toward her, but why else would he be driving her to such a secluded place? She hadn’t planned on screwing him, but once the idea took root in her imagination, she could think of little else.

“The town is right ahead,” he said. When he went around the next curve, she saw the empty buildings.

“What happened here?”

“Folks settled here to grow citrus. Freeze hit about 1894 or ‘95. Killed the trees. Everyone left.”

She looked at the empty buildings as they drove past. “It’s sad, isn’t it?”

“How so?”

“That people lived here. Planned on homesteading and having a life. Then they all just left.” Maybe it was the wine that had brought on the melancholy. Or the emptiness of the buildings. The windows were sightless, and it made her feel that something had passed her by, too.

Pete drove through the town and kept going. They passed a sign directing a right hand turn to the campsites, but Pete turned left, down a narrower trail. Kit’s stomach growled, and the wine was making her a little nauseous. The afternoon sun made the slow moving car an oven. On the highway, a breeze had cooled her.

At last they came to a lake. To her relief, Pete pulled over and stopped.

“This looks like the perfect place for a picnic,” he said.

Cypress knees ringed the lake, and moss draped the branches of the trees. It was beautiful in a wild and dangerous way. “Think there are snakes?” she asked.

“Maybe. Could be gators, too.”

“Thanks,” she said as she got out, glad to stretch her legs and get free of the plastic seat cover. Her thighs were sweaty and hot. She walked to the edge of the lake. While the surface was perfectly still, the water wasn’t crystal and blue like Lake Eloise. This was darker, untamed.

“Want to take a swim?” Pete asked.

“Not on your life.” She wasn’t a baby, but stepping out into the dark water held no appeal for her.

“I gotta pee,” Pete said. “I’ll be right back.”

She watched him walk into the trees, his body disappearing in the gray haze of the trunks. She went to the car and got the food and wine from the back seat. The grass looked stubbly and harsh, so she returned to the trunk to look for a blanket. Pete was the kind of man who had such things covered. If he intended to seduce her, he would have thought to bring something to lay on.

The trunk wasn’t locked, so she opened it. A plaid blanket was tucked into one corner, and she pulled it out. It was wool, an unpleasant scratch to its texture. As she started to close the trunk she saw the two cement blocks and the rope. Her hand faltered on the trunk lid, and the air left her lungs in a whoosh. She turned to run, but Pete was right behind her. She slammed into his chest, and his hand caught her hair.

“Easy there,” he said, holding her hair so tightly she couldn’t get away.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter, Kit.”

She made no effort to fight the tears. “Why?”

“Girls talk. My boss can’t afford rumors.”

“I don’t know anything. I don’t care about any of it.”

He shook his head. “Can’t risk it. The senator has a family he has to protect. Jess thought she could blackmail him.”

Kit tried to think but fear paralyzed her brain. “I don’t want anything. I don’t know anything to tell anyone.”

“You’re a smart girl. You might have decided to poke around. I’m already in trouble since you found Jess’s body. The senator was very disappointed in me.”

A large splash made her jerk toward the water, but Pete’s grip in her hair kept her from seeing.

“I won’t make the same mistake twice,” Pete said. “The gators won’t leave anything of you to identify.” As he spoke he hauled her toward the water. “If you hadn’t gone poking around in the trunk, you could have had a nice picnic and I would’ve put something in your wine to knock you out. As it is, I’ve heard drowning is an easy way to go. My partner wanted to shoot you, but I told him that was too messy. This is much better for all of us.”