Happiness Key (7 page)

“So do you? Know anything about him?” Tracy asked. Her search had turned up nothing, but as she watched, Wanda pulled a ceramic pie plate out of a cupboard, followed closely by a lid that looked like the top crust of a pie.

“Well, here it is.” Wanda held it out. “Close enough to my description for you to believe me?”

“I never accused you of trying to steal his pie dish. That chip on your shoulder must tip a lot of scales. You just surprised me by being here in the dark, rummaging through his cupboards.”

“I didn’t want to have to go into the whole story.”

“I guess you don’t want to tell me if he has friends or family, either. So I’ll have to play detective, maybe? Give me something else to worry about?”

“You having a little pity party over there by the sink? Don’t worry none about inviting me.”

“Glad you found the pie plate. You can let yourself out.” Tracy went back into the living room, snapping on the lamp so the cottage was now aglow.

In the bedroom, she stood in the door with her hands on her hips. The mattress was a double, maybe even a queen size. She was going to have to drag it on its side
and hope it didn’t flip one way or the other as she maneuvered it through the rooms.

She heard footsteps, and Wanda came to stand in the doorway.

“He never said much about himself,” Wanda said. “In answer to your question. Not that I care whether you have to play detective, but Herb deserves a little peace.”

“What
did
he say, do you remember?”

“I think he said he was from Florida. Never said exactly where, though, or if that meant he’d been born in the state. I got the impression he’d lived a few places in his time, something of a wanderer.”

“He never said anything about family?”

“Uh-uh. And I never saw any, either.”

“Friends?”

“He did play chess in Grambling Park with some other old men. I saw him there a couple of times, when I was on the way to the grocery store. Never said nothing about it to me, though.”

“Were you interested?” Tracy knew she should be asking herself the same question. “Never mind.
I
wasn’t. Why should you have been?”

“I did bring him that pie.” Wanda sounded defensive.

“And last week I took him some mail the carrier stuck in my box by mistake. That’s about the sum total of my interaction with the guy.”

“What’ll they do if you don’t find somebody to take charge?”

Tracy had no idea. Was it up to her? Was she the next-best thing to next of kin because she owned the guy’s house? “I guess if nobody comes forward, I’m going to have to go through his papers. You know. To see what I can find out.”

“Guess you didn’t know what you were getting into when you took this job.”

“I didn’t
take
it. It was handed to me. And trust me, it’s not a barrel of laughs.”

“Is that what you’re here for? To look through his things?”

“I’m here to drag the mattress out for the trash pickup tomorrow. He died on the bed. It’s got to go.”

“You’re going to do it by yourself?”

“I was planning to.” Tracy waited, hoping, despite herself, that Wanda would volunteer to help. Between them, they could make short work of it.

“That’s a big job,” Wanda said.

“Has to be done.”

“Well…” Wanda hesitated, then she smirked. “I’ll leave you to it. Sounds like it’s gonna take a little time to get it out there. I won’t keep you.”

“Lock the kitchen door on your way out, won’t you? And leave Herb’s key on the dresser.”

A minute later Tracy heard the back door close. She wasn’t sure whether to be sorry that Wanda hadn’t stayed to help or thrilled the woman was gone. In another minute she was too busy wrestling the mattress to worry about it.

Wanda was a sucker for sad country songs. Patsy Cline and George Jones made her weep before they paused for their first recorded breaths. But Dolly Parton singing “I Will Always Love You”? That wasn’t just a weeper, that was a serious thunderstorm.

Wanda felt around on the kitchen counter for a dish towel, took off her glasses and blotted her eyes before she switched off her favorite radio station. She felt as if she’d been wrung dry. Maybe Whitney Houston
had
made it to the top of the pop charts with Dolly’s song, but she shouldn’t ought to have. Wanda liked Whitney Houston—although she did wonder some about that ex-husband of hers—but nobody else ought to sing one of Dolly’s songs. It was like one of the portrait artists at the downtown beach trying to paint the Mona Lisa.

Wanda wasn’t perfect, but drinking was one problem she’d never had. She never drank if she thought she needed to. That was the key, and she’d told a lot of her customers that very thing, too, although most of them
ignored her. Now she went to the old Kelvinator that had come with the cottage and rummaged to see if Ken had left her a Corona. She found a couple in the back, opened one and drank it right out of the bottle.

The Deloche woman had trudged by a little while ago, looking tired and bedraggled, or as bedraggled as any woman that looked like
that
possibly could. Wrestling that mattress? Must have been some job. It served the landlady right, sneaking up on Wanda in the kitchen the way she had, nearly scaring her to death. And, after all, what did she owe Tracy Deloche? This month, not even a rent check, unless the repair list got tended to.

Besides, that young woman needed somebody to take her down a peg or two. Whenever she talked to Wanda, she sounded like she was talking to somebody with no sense. Ms. Deloche wasn’t even from Florida, while Wanda’s ancestors had settled deep in the Keys back when alligators and Seminoles were the only neighbors for miles and miles.

Now she stood at the sink, staring out at the driveway and drinking. Halfway through the Corona, she stopped telling herself she had behaved just fine. That was Dolly’s fault. Who could listen to that sweet woman and still tell themselves lies? Maybe Wanda did have good reason not to like Tracy Deloche, but her mother, poor as she was, hadn’t raised her to be mean-spirited. Wanda had grown up taking casseroles to neighbors when somebody was sick, watering flowers, and feeding the cat three doors down when the old lady who lived there visited her daughter in Tennessee. Wanda knew you didn’t do these things so people would be nice in return. You did them because that was how good people behaved.

She hadn’t always been bitter and unkind. When she and Ken had lived in Doral, people had come to her with
problems, because they knew she could be counted on for the truth and a helping hand. Wives of other cops had asked for advice and sometimes even taken it.

Now look who she had become.

Tracy Deloche had known Herb Krause for next to no time. Wanda hadn’t been the old man’s best bud, but still, she had known him longer. They’d swapped a few sentences, waved at each other on a regular basis. She owed him something for all the times she hadn’t invited him for supper or at least taken him a plate when she’d made plenty to share. She knew she was the right person to help find Herb’s family.

But even Dolly couldn’t make her take the first step. Who knew where she might land?

The sound of a car in the driveway interrupted her unwelcome train of thought, although the car was unwelcome, too. She checked the clock over the stove. Maybe Ken had finally gotten up the courage to either move out, ask for a divorce or start acting like a husband again. More likely he just needed a clean shirt before he went wherever it was he went after work nowadays. If he’d done his laundry, he might even find one.

She was wiping the counters when the door opened and he stepped inside the little utility room that led into the kitchen. She ignored him until he was standing right beside her.

“Evening,” he said.

“You got the time right, that’s for sure.”

“Sorry I didn’t make it home for supper.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t make you any. A waste of good food.”

“I have more paperwork now than I had at Metro. If I didn’t stay late, it would never get done.”

Ken still referred to the Miami-Dade Police Depart
ment as Metro. All the old cops did. She wondered if he did that on purpose, so he could remember it the way it had been in the beginning, before everything had changed for him.

“If you didn’t stay late, you might have to remember you’re married,” she said. “And we can’t have that.”

“Don’t start on me, Wanda.”

“Don’t worry, the sun sapped all my energy.” She rinsed out her dishrag, squeezed it like it was a certain cop’s neck, then hung it over the faucet to dry.

“Herb Krause was found dead in his house this afternoon. Landlady found him.”

“Yeah. I heard from the sheriff’s department.”

She studied her husband. He had changed out of his uniform, and wore dark jeans and a subdued Hawaiian-style shirt their daughter had given him. Ken was still a good-looking man. That never seemed fair to her. Men aged differently than women. At fifty-seven, Ken’s hair was classic salt-and-pepper, and his tanned skin was lined from sun and wind. But he held himself tall the way he always had, and he hadn’t drunk himself a beer belly or eaten his way to an extra chin. Even though his nose had been broken twice in the line of duty, it was still straight. Women continued to look at him with interest, while more and more men looked the other way when she walked by. She had fallen in love with that face, that body, almost on first sight.

Which just went to show that a woman could be swayed by the darnedest things.

“He was a nice old coot,” she said.

“They’re planning a funeral?”

“Doesn’t seem to be a
they.
You don’t know anything about a family, do you?”

“I never said more than hello to him.”

She didn’t repeat the obvious, that these days
hello
was the most anybody could expect from Ken. “There’s lunch meat in the fridge if you want a sandwich. I made myself potato salad yesterday, and there’s some left.” She held up her bottle. “More of these, too.”

“I ate lunch late. I need a walk more than I need food.”

“Well, have at it. There’s a whole beach out there waiting for you.”

He didn’t leave, the way she expected him to. “Except for the old man dying, you have a good day off?”

She was surprised he remembered she hadn’t had to work. “Nothing special.” She thought about her encounter with Tracy Deloche. Once upon a time the story would have made him smile, but Ken’s gaze was already restless, like he was hoping to find something in the kitchen to think about besides her.

“You get out for a little sun?” he asked.

“I mostly stayed off my feet.”

He didn’t leave. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but she didn’t have a clue what it might be.

“Something happen at work?” she prompted.

“Nothing ever happens.”

“I don’t know why you sound disappointed. Isn’t that why we moved to Palmetto Grove?”

“I was just telling you about my day.”

“What else do you want to tell me?”

“Nothing, Wanda. I’m just making conversation. You always say we don’t talk anymore.”

“Maybe I’m just imagining things changed. Maybe all the years of our marriage were as lonely and miserable as the last two, and I just forgot.”

He had looked tired when he came in, and now he looked even more so. “I’m going to take that walk now.”

“You do that, Kenny. I won’t wait up.”

He stood there for a moment, as if he did have more to say. For a moment—fool that she was—she was actually hopeful. Three little words could start their marriage back on the right track.

Come with me.

Despite what she’d said, their marriage
had
been good, the kind of marriage a woman never dares to hope for. That marriage could still be saved—if both of them wanted it to be, if both of them made an effort. But after trying so hard for so long, Wanda was pretty much out of effort herself. Ken had to be the one to make the next move.

He turned, and his hand was on the doorknob before he spoke again. “Maybe I’ll see you in the morning.”

She could feel her shoulders droop, but she kept her voice even. “Stranger things have happened.”

He’d been gone a while before she made her way to the telephone. She wasn’t worried he would come back now. Not until she was sound asleep and a new day had begun. She knew the pattern. She had hours on her own until she finally went to bed. But she wasn’t going to spend them alone.

She made a pot of coffee, cut slices of the mocha pecan pie she hadn’t told Ken about—let him find the pie if he ever looked in the refrigerator. In the bedroom she changed into a peach silk nightgown with silly little satin straps that barely held it in place. She liked the way the silk brushed her thighs and the cut of the gown hid the sag of fifty-seven-year-old boobs. The girls weren’t as perky as they once had been, but no matter. They were sure perky enough to make her feel sexy and womanly, and she needed that tonight.

She left her hair up and her makeup on, because she wasn’t going to bed. Instead, after she made a tray with
a carafe of steaming hot coffee, the pie and real linen napkins, she settled herself on the sofa, lounging like Cleopatra on her barge down the Nile. All she needed to complete the image was the asp. Luckily her personal asp had just left for the night.

She picked up the telephone and dialed a familiar number. “Hey, hon,” she said, her voice low and soft. “You’re being seduced, ’cause I’m here all by myself.” She listened for a moment, nodding as she did. “Now that would be swell. You know that’s exactly what I want to do. I’m just lying here waiting.”

Tracy wasn’t sure how she got interested in shells. Apparently moving to Florida did one of two things for people. Either a new resident learned to appreciate Mother Nature’s exquisite craftsmanship, her use of color and intricate details and, yes, old nature woman’s sense of humor—because what was funnier looking than a sea horse? Or that new resident got so thoroughly sick of shell wreaths, shell-filled lamps, shells with candles inside them, that the beauty became instantly invisible and shells on the beach were just an annoyance to crunch under flip-flops.

She had started in the second camp, victimized by some of the most hideous shell art ever conceived. A previous resident of her cottage had glued shells to everything that didn’t move. Furniture and door frames, window ledges and even the toilet-seat cover. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, the “artist” had strung shells into room dividers. Tracy had found a shell-studded nativity scene packed in the closet, with the baby Jesus lying in
a conch instead of a manger. She had packed it right back up and sent it to Sherrie, as a thank-you for all she had done to help Tracy during the divorce. It would be just like Sherrie to send her a box of Rocky Mountain oysters in return.

She wasn’t sure exactly when she’d begun to appreciate shells. Somewhere along the way, as she removed the offending artwork, she stopped seeing the art and started noticing the motivation for it, the shells themselves. The journey to finding her own shells, unadulterated by craft glue or varnish, had been a short one. And the best time to find them was just before sunrise.

The day after finding Herb’s body, Tracy woke in the dark and knew that she wouldn’t be going back to sleep. She had dreamed she was home again, dressed in a designer gown she had sold in a consignment shop before leaving California. In the dream, though, the dress still belonged to her, and she looked wonderful in it. Tan, fit, unworried. She sailed through the door of the country club where she and CJ had been members, only to be stopped by two men in dark suits carrying walkie-talkies.

“You don’t belong here,” she was told. Then, as people gathered to watch, the two men turned into eagles, grasped her in their talons and lifted her high above the building. As she screamed, they flew higher and higher, and finally released her. She was tumbling down to a white sand beach when she awoke with a choked cry.

She didn’t need Freud for an interpretation. In fact, once she shook off the worst of it, she was embarrassed. Other people had deep, richly nuanced dreams. Hers were cartoons on steroids.

She got up, and threw on shorts and a T-shirt. The sky was beginning to lighten, and a storm had come through last night, which meant that the beach would be filled
with more shells than usual. She had lots to do that day. Find Herb’s relatives. Find a job. Find someone to install the tiles that would be arriving that afternoon. But first, she was going to find shells.

She made green tea and poured it in a travel mug. Then she slid into her flip-flops, pocketed her keys and set out to see what treasures the storm had delivered.

She did not expect company.

“Jeez!” Tracy slapped her hand to her chest as an apparition appeared out of the darkness when she reached the shore.

The man took a step backward, as if to show that he had no ill intentions. He held up his hands. “Not to worry. Just out for a walk.”

“On my beach!”

“Not exactly.” The man gave her a slow grin. It seemed to take seconds. “The wet-sand area of a Florida beach is held in trust for all citizens.”

“You’re making that up.”

“Nope. All tidally influenced waters—and you see this would qualify, right? You’ve noticed we have tides? Anyway, tidally influenced waters up to the average high-water line, plus bodies of fresh water deep enough to navigate to the same ordinary high-water line that existed in 1845—that’s when Florida became a state, by the way—are considered sovereign. In other words, they’re held in trust by the state for every cane-chopping Cracker and intruder on our shores.”

Tracy stared at him. The man was somewhere on the road to forty, tall, but not tall enough to alleviate some of the extra weight around his middle. He was dressed in ragged cutoffs and a T-shirt that had been new in the 80s, when vendors sold it at Grateful Dead concerts.

“I have a bad, bad feeling I know who you are,” she said.

He held out his hand. “Marshall Egan. My friends call me Marsh.”

Tracy was very sure she would not be one of them.

As she worked on something to say, she eyed him warily. He had a nice enough oval face, long hair drawn back in a short sandy ponytail, tan skin. Finally, because it would be too rude not to, she extended her hand for the quickest of shakes.

“Tracy Deloche.”

“Yeah, I sort of suspected as much.”

“Wild Florida, right?”

“You’re up on things.”

“Exactly what are you stalking this morning, Mr. Egan? Shells? Waterfowl? New lawsuits to keep me from selling the land you’re standing on?”

“You weren’t listening. You can never sell what doesn’t belong to you.”

She waved that away. “Then how about the part
I’m
standing on? Or that part just behind me? Do you have some new regulation to pull out that says the people of Florida own everything I thought I did?”

He smiled again. “We’re working hard on it. Right now we’re suing the Corps, but you could be next.”

“Why? Did I step on something endangered? Some root or weed? Some microscopic beetle?”

“Nah, we’re just not going to let you develop this land. We have so many strategies, our strategies have strategies.”

“I wonder if I’d find you this annoying if it wasn’t
my
land we were talking about?” She considered a moment. “Yeah, you know, I would. I really would. You’re enjoying yourself. At my expense.”

“‘Expense’ is a good word. Let’s talk about it. Do you know what kind of expenses you’re going to incur if you try to knock down so much as a bush?”

“You’re right.” She scuffed her palm along the side of her head. “I should just sign the deed over to you right now. What was I thinking? Then we can join hands and sing ‘This Land is Your Land.’ We can write a verse about white sand and mosquitoes.”

“You are much too perky for this kind of animosity. It’s just not becoming.”

She stepped closer. “I used to be married to the greatest real-estate shark of all time. And even though I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, I did learn a few things. First, you don’t give up. Second, you don’t give up. Third, while you’re not giving up, you’re also not letting people walk all over you.
You
do the walking. I got that much from my marriage, that and this bug-infested slice of Florida real estate. And by the time we’re done here, you’ll feel my footprints all over you, Marshall Egan.”

He examined her as if she were one of those bugs. “Here’s the thing,” he said, not smiling this time. “It doesn’t matter how many times you don’t give up. You’re not going to win. People are tired of seeing Florida dredged, developed and destroyed. You might say that’s our own little 3-D show down here, only nobody needs funny plastic glasses to view the result. So people are throwing money at us right and left to stop it. And we’re not stupid. We’d rather spend their contributions on land than lawsuits. Your real-estate agent knows Wild Florida’s willing to start serious negotiations.”

Tracy had already heard the organization’s starting offer, as informal as it was. Maribel had informed Tracy that Wild Florida was talking a fraction of what a developer would pay in a better economy.

“When you get really serious, give me a call,” she said. “But let’s not play games. Come up a few million so at least we’re playing ball on the same continent. This is prime land surrounded by water at a time when everybody wants their own view of blue.” She remembered that phrase from one of CJ’s brochures. “The economy’s in the dumps right now, but soon enough developers will be looking hard for just what I’m offering. I can wait. Can you?”

“You have children?”

She shook her head. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“It gives you a different perspective, or at least it should. I’ve got a boy. He’s probably going to have kids of his own someday. I’d kind of like them to grow up knowing Florida has something to offer besides Disney World, golf courses, fancy marinas and retirement villages built on former wetlands.”

“Then meet my price.” She didn’t owe him an explanation, but she gave one anyway. “This land is all I have. I’m not going to give it away. I plan to make enough selling it to live comfortably for the rest of my life.”

He gave a low whistle. “That gives ‘comfortable’ a whole new meaning.”

“I think we’re done here. The tide’s coming in. You stay down there in that…what’d you call it? That wet-sand area? You stay there too long, you’ll be up to your knees in water on your way back home, unless you trespass and finish your morning walk on my property. And I’ll be watching.”

“No, you won’t. You’re not half as tough as you’re making yourself out to be.”

“Try me.” The sun was peeking over the horizon now, and the sky was as pink as a Canadian sun-worshiper. For
a moment she watched it climb; then, forgoing the chance to look for shells, she started back toward her cottage. She had lost all desire to enjoy anything Florida had to offer.

Janya watched the sun rising from her private scrub-shrouded sanctuary. She had found this spot on one of her morning walks. Surely somebody else knew about it, but nobody was ever here when she arrived each morning. She wasn’t sure which she liked better, the sun rising in the sky, the very same sun that rose over India, or the way that the tide moved slowly back and forth, erasing all signs of nightly activity. A clean start, isn’t that what they called such a thing here? A reminder that the past could be wiped away?

As she walked, she had picked up a long stick, using it to poke at sea creatures who had lost their way, and shells marooned by the tide. She nudged them carefully back to their saltwater home, although Rishi had told her that the shell creatures would die anyway. Perhaps so, but she thought there was still a possibility one might not. That was the one she hoped to save.

The sand where waves had lapped, then receded during the night was glassy smooth, a warm beige like the sleek fur of a lioness. She took a step forward and began to carve the perfect surface with the point of her stick.

Fifteen minutes later, her drawing was complete. She had recreated, as closely as she could, the image of Lakshmi, the goddess daughter of the ocean king. Lakshmi, of whom every other goddess was only a part, who raised up and gave power to the individual. Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune. Janya had drawn her sitting cross-legged in the cupped petals of a lotus, four arms extended,
a peaceful expression on her lovely face. Or as lovely as a stick in golden sand could make her.

Exactly what would she ask Lakshmi for if she could?

She stood back and looked at the image, surprised she had created it. Drawing was part of her former life. She’d had no desire to release the images in her head since coming to Florida. Yet doing so now had seemed natural and effortless. Of course, this was only sand, and the tide would soon swallow all signs of it.

If she’d had the time, she would have waited to watch. Instead, she turned back toward her cottage. Rishi was already gone, anxious to start his day. His enthusiasm for software design mystified her, as did his decision to turn down substantial offers from two large corporations to work on their design teams. Instead, he had taken the money he’d earned as a computer consultant during his years of graduate school at Carnegie Mellon, invested it in marketing a suite of programs he’d designed to help small businesses, then used the profit from that to rent a former seafood processing warehouse on Palmetto Beach and set up his own software firm. The warehouse still smelled like fish, the office was furnished with secondhand castoffs from more prosperous businesses, and he worked with a skeleton staff. But Rishi had faith that these lean, hungry years would pay off. He said he was poised to fly.

For a moment Janya wondered where
she
would fly if she could. Back to India, but only if she could also fly back in time. If not? No place came to mind, because anywhere else, she would be a stranger again.

She removed her sandals at the door and brushed the sand off her feet. Then she went inside and set water on the stove for tea. Only when it was brewed, and she had taken time to breathe deeply and visualize herself in a
calmer place, did she pick up the telephone. It would be five in the afternoon at home, and her mother would probably have finished her tea, a custom their family always observed with a masala-spiced mixture like Janya was drinking now, and samosas or other savory delicacies. Even if her mother had shopped late, she would still be home, making certain dinner preparations were under way, that the house had been swept and cleaned to her standards, that Janya’s brother, Yash, was studying.

Janya’s parents had hoped Yash might attend one of the colleges of Oxford, but her brother, though bright, was not a conscientious mathematics student. Instead, now he struggled in a local program to become a chartered accountant like their father. Janya knew that, secretly, Yash wanted to teach, that history was the subject he really wanted to pursue, and that the dream of joining the family business belonged to his parents. But Yash had yet to tell them. She wondered if he was afraid that when he did, his parents would turn their backs on him, as they had turned their backs on her.

Finally, as serene as she would ever be, she dialed the long series of numbers that would bring her voice home to India.

The woman who answered the telephone was not familiar, but Janya remembered that her mother had mentioned in one of their infrequent conversations that she had hired a new maid to help with cooking and cleaning. Janya identified herself to the young woman, but a long hesitation ensued, as if the maid were trying to place her. The muscles in Janya’s throat grew tight as the maid finally agreed to bring her mother to the phone.