Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 01 - Hurricane Season (19 page)

The screen door of the Elmo House was loose on its hinges, but the heavy wooden front entrance was boarded over and nailed shut. Josh shoved it and kicked it. It shuddered and held firm.

“Wait,” said Lily. There was a way to get into the hotel. She knew that, because there had been scandals from time to time about high school girls getting pregnant there. She followed the veranda around the side of the building and found a broken window with its protective boards swinging free. She called Josh and, carrying their burdens, they climbed through.

They were in a large, high-ceilinged room with a fireplace. This was the dining room, she thought, and fleetingly remembered a long-ago meal—it might have been fried chicken—and a sunny room with white tablecloths. Now, debris was piled in the corners, wallpaper hung in strips, and the floor was covered with a fine layer of sand. A gust of wind rattled the windows. The building creaked.

A puddle was forming around Lily’s feet as her raincoat shed water. The windows rattled again. She saw a pine branch hurtle through the air, and heard it hit the side of the building with a thud. She wondered how the Elmo House would stand up to a hurricane.

Josh sank down with his back against the wall and rested his head on his knees. Lily, still dripping, watched him. The things they had brought from the boat were in an untidy heap under the window. She took the tarpaulin and a cushion and proffered them to Josh. He glanced up and shook his head. She unfolded the tarp. “Better wrap up in this.”

He made a tent around his shoulders with the stiff canvas and closed his eyes. Lily sat down a few yards away, but despite her exhaustion she felt jumpy. She was cold, too. Water dribbled from her hair to her neck, sliding underneath the raincoat collar. She shivered and got up.

“You got any matches?” she asked.

Josh shook his head without opening his eyes. She searched the tackle box. Hooks, sinkers, corks, line. A pair of pliers for extracting hooks, a minnow net, a bait rag, an out-of-place assortment of nails and screws. Underneath it all, a box of matches. She held them up. “Found some.”

There was a wadded paper bag and a few candy-bar wrappers among the broken beer bottles in the corners. She collected these and pulled strips of damp and mildewed wallpaper from the walls. That might start a fire, but she needed wood to keep it going. She walked into a dark and drafty hall. Across it, another door opened into what had been the hotel lobby. Tall front windows looked out on the furious surf. Her boat, Lily could see, was still right side up, although tossing on the ever-rising seas. Pigeonholes that had once held mail for guests gaped empty on the walls, and in the center of the room, listing on a loose leg, stood a rickety ladder-back chair, its cane bottom rotted away.

Josh looked up when she reentered the dining room dragging the chair. “Firewood,” she said.

After several false starts, they coaxed a smoky, wavering flame into life in the stone fireplace. They crouched in front of it, feeding in pieces of wood Josh had broken off by knocking the chair against the floor. Despite the constant groaning and creaking of the building and the lashing rain, Lily began to relax. Some color, she noticed, had come back to Josh’s face, although he still looked drawn. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.

“Oh”—Josh pulled the tarp closer around him—“he wasn’t my friend. None of them was my friend. But he was nicer than the others.” He gazed into the fire. “Thanks for trying to warn me.”

“I’m sorry it happened the way it did.” Then she remembered. “I didn’t come over here to tell you about the Calhouns, anyway. It was something else. I found out that Snapper Landis, the congressman, put up the money for your still. I was coming to tell you that.”

Josh stared at her. “How do you know?”

She told him about her conversation with Pearl, and Snapper’s strange behavior, and went on to her deduction that Bo and Diana had been lovers.

“That’s right. I knew that already,” Josh said.

“You did?”

“Sue Nell Calhoun told me.” He shifted, looking uneasy. “I know her.”

Lily waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she said, “I figure Snapper had Bo’s still blown up, and Diana found out about it. To get even, she wrote to the Beverage Department and turned in her own daddy.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“I’m positive. She wrote a poem about it.” Lily unwrapped the oilcloth package. Diana’s composition book was dry. She found the place and handed it to him.

His eyes moved over the lines. “‘When it came to a decision, I knew I would have to choose you,’” he said. He leafed through the other pages, occasionally stopping to read. “She was a wild little thing, wasn’t she?”

“Wild. Miserable. And nobody really cared about her but the maid.”

“And ended up caught in a net, a catfish trying to eat her fingers.” Josh handed the book back, and she rewrapped it in its covering. He rubbed his eyes. “I expect you’re right about her sending that letter. If we get out of here alive I can find out.”

The fire flickered. Although it was only late afternoon, the room was darkening as the intensity of the storm increased. “Bo Calhoun must have cared about her,” Josh said after a pause.

“I don’t know. Diana told Pearl he almost hit her once.” She looked at him curiously. “What does Sue Nell say about it?”

He shook his head and didn’t answer.

In a moment, he got up and left the room. She heard him climbing the stairs. When he returned, he had some loose boards under his arm. “Found them in one of the rooms,” he said. “Maybe left over from when they shut the place up.” He knelt and fed the fire.

Lily watched him. “How did you get into this line of work?”

He sat back. “Didn’t want to farm. Hurt my daddy, but there it was. Finally got on with the Beverage Department.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“What?”

“I don’t know”—Lily waved her hand—“work with people, then turn them in.”

“They’re breaking the law. And I’ll tell you the truth. Some of them are all right, but some are the sorriest folks you ever saw. Take that Murphy I been working for. And the blond fellow, Amos. Those are two mean sons of guns.”

The rain was a steady roar. The walls shook, and the windows rattled. How was the store, Lily wondered. And her house. And Aubrey. He would see the boat was gone and think she was dead. Maybe she would die and never get home. Would he be sorrier if she died, or if she lived?

“Are you married?” she asked.

Josh grimaced. “Nope.”

“You must be twenty-five. Why not?”

“I’m twenty-six. I reckon I didn’t love anybody enough.”

“Maybe it doesn’t take so much.”

He set his chin. “It does for me.”

“You’ve been in love?”

He kept his eyes steadily on the fire. “I’m in love now.”

It was the answer Lily had expected. “With Sue Nell Calhoun,” she said.

Josh nodded.

Lily breathed out between her teeth. “Well, aren’t you in trouble.”

“I’m in trouble,” said Josh. “I’m sitting here worrying about how she’s getting through this storm, instead of worrying about how we’re going to. She’s up at a fish camp.”

“On Tupelo Branch? She’ll be all right, I imagine. Of course, the river will rise. But she’s been through this all her life, you know.”

Josh looked slightly happier. “That’s right.”

Lily felt light-headed. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but the feeling was less hunger than a dizziness that came from having too much to take in. The dizziness and Josh’s confidences made her reckless. “My husband doesn’t talk,” she said.

He frowned. “Ever?”

“Oh, he says something now and again. Hello, good-bye. He goes out and keeps his bees. I don’t see him much. He’s been this way since his heart attack.”

“He’s scared he’s going to die, probably.”

“Everybody’s scared they’re going to die. That’s no reason to act like you’re already dead.”

Lily was surprised at the anger in her voice, but Josh didn’t seem disturbed. “That’s right.”

“I didn’t give him a heart attack. Why stop talking to me?”

“I don’t reckon he’s thought about that. He just doesn’t feel like talking, so he doesn’t talk.”

Lily was silenced by this simple logic. Her face felt warm. She had never complained to anybody about Aubrey’s behavior before. She felt guilty but relieved. At least Josh hadn’t acted as if he thought she’d done anything shameful. She rested against one of the boat cushions, watching the fire. In a few minutes, she was asleep.

Bo Calhoun’s ax bit into the oak barrel, and mash adulterated with rainwater belched out, mixing with the mud on the ground. It swirled near the heavy shoes of his brother, Sonny, whose body lay half under the table in the clearing. The roof had blown off the shed, and Purvis and Lester huddled next to one of the walls, close by Larry’s mud-spattered body.

Bo hacked at the barrel until it was little more than splinters. He took one of the iron rings that had bound it together and flung it, as hard as he could, into the trees. Then he stood, swept by rain and wind, leaning on the ax, his shoulders heaving.

The clearing was filled with wreckage. Twisted pieces of metal, disconnected copper pipes, broken glass littered the ground. The camp stove was lodged in a bush. The lantern had been shattered, but its top half still hung from a branch, swinging crazily in the gale.

Purvis, his head bent against the rain, left his place by the shed wall and ran to Bo. Tentatively, he put his arm around Bo’s shoulders. Bo gave no sign of noticing. Purvis pulled at him. “Come on over here, Bo!” he bawled in Bo’s ear.

Bo allowed himself to be led to the shed where he crouched with his brothers, only slightly out of the wind. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I’ll kill those sons of bitches,” he said. He looked at Larry’s body. “We only got one. And they got Sonny.” He rounded on Lester. “Why the hell did you leave the dock? You let them get away!”

“There was all kinds of shooting. And I heard something,” said Lester. “I was trying to do it right. It’s my fault Sonny got killed.” His face collapsed, and his heavy body shook.

“No, old buddy.” Bo shook his brother’s shoulder. “That fat one made a lucky shot, is all. But I’m going to fill his gut full of lead. Don’t you worry about that.” He looked around. “Where’s my gun?”

Purvis handed it to him. It was wrapped in a raincoat. “It’s loaded,” he said.

Bo felt in the pockets of his foul-weather gear. “I got plenty of shells.” He leaned toward Lester and Purvis. “You stay here till the storm lets up, and take Sonny’s body home. Leave my boat at the dock. When I’ve found them and killed them I’ll come back for it. If they show up here, shoot them.”

Purvis’s face was ashen. “Where you going, Bo?”

“They can’t get off this island. I’m going to find them.” Bo drew the hood of his jacket tight around his face. When he left the clearing, he didn’t look back at his three brothers.

When Lily woke, the room was almost completely dark. A few embers still glowed in the fireplace, and by their light and the last murky illumination at the windows she could see Josh slumped asleep under his tarpaulin, his head on a boat cushion.

There was some wood left. She tore off more wallpaper and with it teased the embers back into flame. When the fire was burning again, she walked to the windows and looked out.

At the sight she froze, amazed. The ocean had risen nearly to the edge of the veranda; waves broke and rolled across the weathered boards. Spray mingled on the windows with the incessant rain. The only way they could reach the boat now, presuming it was still there, was swim for it. Lily clutched her raincoat around her. How long could the old hotel stand this battering?

She looked in the opposite direction, up the ridge on whose slope the hotel stood. The white sand and sea oats, the overlooking row of pines, all were nearly obscured by dark and rain. Something was moving across the sand. A branch blowing, perhaps, or a beach towel from someone’s clothesline.

Her attention was distracted by a loud groaning of timber, then a cracking sound, and she turned to see that one of the supports of the veranda roof had given away, and the roof was swaying down toward the water. She backed away from the window, less from the instinct to protect herself than from unwillingness to see more.

Behind her, she heard Josh scramble to his feet. “What the hell was that?” His voice was hoarse with sleep.

“The porch roof is about to fall down. And we’ve got water on our doorstep.”

He came and looked out. “My God.”

The sound of glass breaking, followed by a heavy thud, came from the back of the hotel. Josh said, “Jesus Christ, what now?” The sound of running feet echoed down the hall. Before either of them could move, Bo Calhoun appeared in the doorway, pointing a shotgun.

Bo’s eyes darted around the room, then came to rest on Josh. “I’m Bo Calhoun. My brother’s dead,” he said. “Are they here?”

Josh shook his head.

Bo walked forward. There was an intensity in his face Lily had never seen there before. “You were at the still. I saw you,” he said to Josh. “You’re one of them. You know where they are.”

“I don’t.”

The look on Bo’s face frightened Lily. She said, “Bo—”

He glanced at her. “They got Sonny, Miss Lily.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He frowned. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you shouldn’t be around. Because this boy has got to tell me where his friends are. There’s two others and him left alive. They blew up my still, and they killed my brother.”

“But you can’t—” said Lily, and stopped. To tell Bo that Josh was a revenue agent would make no difference. Bo had been brought up hating the Beverage Department worse than the devil. And, even if he knew, he probably still wouldn’t believe that Josh didn’t know where Murphy and Amos were. Looking at Josh’s face, set in stolid lines, she wondered if he did know.

“Now, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Bo said. “We’re going to wait out the storm right here. When it lets up, you’re going to tell me where their little hidey-hole is.”