Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide (17 page)

Chinese porcelain. Gold, silver. “What’s the conjecture?”

“I challenged Edward to figure out whether the ship could have ended up near Cape St. Elmo. I mean, this was a project with everything— history, geography, meteorology, astronomy. You have to figure currents and weather, know latitude and longitude. I told him if he pinpointed some possible locations, we’d go diving and search for it. I told you he was smart. He ate it up. He was so caught up in the
Esperanza
project, we had to make a rule that he couldn’t start on it until after he’d done his homework.”

“And did you—” Isabel cleared her throat. “Did you find it?”

“Oh, hell no,” he said dismissively. “I don’t think either of us really expected to. Edward did a lot of calculations and figured out several general areas where he thought it could be. I mean, all of this is such a long shot. People don’t realize how big the ocean is, how hard it is to locate anything. We knew that. We weren’t serious.” His face grew more solemn. “Not really serious,” he repeated.

“And you were searching one of Edward’s locations when—”

“When he died, yeah,” he said. “We’d just started. There were some beams down there, loose lumber, and somehow he got pinned. He was panicking; his mouthpiece came out. I couldn’t get to him—” He closed his eyes for a moment, swallowing. “I got his weight belt unhooked and dragged him to the surface. I don’t know how I got him on the boat. He was limp. He was— he was dead, but I didn’t know. I radioed for help, tried to resuscitate him. Another boat came up soon, then several more, but it was too late.”

The silence stretched out. Isabel said, “The people who came to help— were they people you knew?”

He thought. “A couple were tourists. The first boat to get there was a scuba party coming in from diving nearby. A local captain, Harry Mercer.”

So there it was. She said, “Harry Mercer. I used to know him.”

“He tried to help. His deckhand made several dives to retrieve our equipment. But there was nothing anybody could do. Edward was gone.”

Headlights shone through the window, and in a minute Isabel heard the front door open. Eve’s voice called, “Clem? I’m home.”

“We’re back here.”

Footsteps sounded in the hall. Eve stuck her head in the door. “Hello, Isabel. What are you doing in here, Clem?”

“Just— talking.”

“Talking?” She clasped her hands nervously. “Isabel, I hope he hasn’t been depressing you. It would be so much better if he’d—”

Clem turned on her. “For God’s sake, Eve! Leave me alone!”

Her face flushed. “Sorry.” She stepped back. “Excuse me.”

As her footsteps receded, Isabel said, “I’d better go.”

He gestured at the file. “I’m going to throw all of it away. That’ll make Eve happy.”

He walked her to the door and she said good night. When she pulled out of the driveway, she could see him through the windows. He was back in the study, sitting at the desk, bending over the file.

At 7:15 a.m., when Harry walked out of his room, Scooter was already on the dock, leaning against a post and eating one of his yogurts with a plastic spoon. They were scheduled to take out a dive party. Harry had not mentioned to Scooter that he and Kathy were separated, and he could see by the set of Scooter’s body that Scooter was wondering why he was staying at the Beachcomber.

Their party was nowhere in sight. Harry waved at Scooter and veered off toward the restaurant to get some coffee. He was a little hung over from spending the evening at the bar, and the sun on the water wasn’t helping his headache.

Harry had moved out on Kathy. The thought was still strange to him. He was living in a room with twin beds, a braided rug that looked like the potholders his daughters used to make at camp, and a toilet that gurgled all night.

But he was glad. It had been coming a long time; he saw that now. He got his coffee and, carrying it with him, walked along the dock toward the
Miss Kathy
and Scooter.

The air was still and moist, full of the scent of the many fish that had been cleaned in the neighborhood. Scooter had gone back to his yogurt, and the sight of the spoonfuls of pink stuff going into Scooter’s mouth made Harry’s stomach more sour. He blotted his face with his napkin and hardened himself to face Scooter’s gaze, which made Harry feel he had to say something. He delayed for a minute by asking, “The boat gassed up?”

Scooter nodded.

“Everything on board?”

Another nod.

Harry waved in the direction of the room he was occupying. “I’ve moved out here for a while,” he said. He tried to make it sound like it didn’t much matter, and basically he thought he succeeded.

Scooter had gotten still. “Yeah? Why?” he asked.

“Well…” Harry took a swallow of scalding coffee and choked it down. “Kathy and I haven’t been getting along too good.”

Scooter walked to the garbage can next to the bait tanks and dropped in his cup and spoon. When he returned, he braced himself against the post and started stretching out his hamstrings. His hair was skinned back in the ponytail he wore diving. His head lowered, Scooter said, “This is because of Isabel.”

“Isabel? What? No, it isn’t.”

The sinews in Scooter’s bare arms stood out as he gripped the post. “Don’t bullshit me, Harry.”

Harry was getting a crick in his neck. He eased his head around, trying to work it out. “Answer me one thing,” he said.

No response.

“What the hell is it to you?”

Scooter didn’t reply right away. His head still bent, he continued to press his heels down. Finally, he stood upright and looked at Harry. “She went into the house,” he said.

A goose walked over Harry’s grave. “Why do you say that?”

“Because somebody was in there. She was in there.”

Scooter began doing deep knee bends. Why he didn’t barf that yogurt, Harry did not understand. “How do you know?”

“I felt it.”

“You felt it? Was anything moved? Was anything missing?”

“No.”

“Then what in the hell did you feel?”

“I felt a presence.”

Scooter moved smoothly, effortlessly, up and down. He could keep going for a long time, Harry knew, and still he wouldn’t be breathing hard. “It’s time to put a stop to it,” Scooter said.

Harry shaded his eyes and looked toward the parking lot. “Where in the hell are those folks? We’re losing time.”

Scooter’s tanned back moved up and down. “I don’t care what you’ve got going with her. It’s time.”

Harry thought about Isabel going into the house. Goddamn. He wanted to punch something.

A couple of minutes later, the people in the morning dive party came trailing up, full of excuses, and they were ready to leave at last.

Isabel hunched forward, staring at the blue-and-white bottle. She had been trying to draw the bottle all morning.

It should have been easy, a beginner’s exercise. The bottle was square. At the top, the corners modulated into rounded, sloping shoulders culminating in a short neck. It was a simple, unpretentious shape, yet she had been unable to capture it. Her attempts were so awkward they would have been an embarrassment in a beginning drawing class.

Isabel wanted to believe that if she could produce a clean sketch of the bottle, it would help her decide what to do next. If everything else had been equal, she would simply report to the authorities that someone had broken and entered the house and seemed to be squatting in there. But she was positive that Harry was involved somehow. And who knows, maybe Clem Davenant was too. And come to that, what about Merriam’s bottle? How did that figure in? The minute she reported anything, Isabel would start a train of events that would end – where? If she could only see clearly— but she couldn’t. Too many images arose, clouding her vision.

Clem and Edward, with their archaeology project, their calculations of winds and tides and latitude and longitude, must have located the shipwreck without realizing it. They had just begun to explore a projected site when Edward had his catastrophic accident. Harry and his deckhand came to the rescue, and the deckhand dove to retrieve their equipment. He must have seen something then, enough to interest them in exploring further. After that day, Clem had worse problems. He wasn’t likely to lay claim to the
Esperanza.

Isabel gave up trying to draw the bottle.

Her eyes moved to the photograph above it, the sepia-toned portrait of her grandfather, John James. He gazed into the distance with bulbous, unseeing eyes, a man whose essence was mystery, a man who handed his daughter Merriam a Chinese porcelain bottle and vanished without a trace.

Isabel began to see John James’s disappearance as the force that had driven them all these years. The extravagant, burdensome house stood as his monument. He was the deity Merriam had set up her altar to. John James was a myth.

Or was he? Isabel put the pencil behind her ear and told herself to get real. John James Anders was not a myth. His disappearance had not taken place in a misty ancient age, but in 1922. Even if you saw it as symbolic, there were facts involved.

She considered those facts as recounted by Merriam: There was a terrible storm. A tramp called River Pete took shelter with the family. The baby had colic. John James and River Pete cleared out fallen trees. John James checked the foundation of the house. Over his wife’s protests, he decided to take his boat to St. Elmo. Merriam walked him to the landing and he gave her the porcelain bottle and a letter for her mother. Merriam lost the letter on the way home. John James never came back.

The story was as smooth and self-contained as an egg— no handles, no rough corners.

Isabel tossed her sketchbook aside, went to the refrigerator, and poured herself a glass of iced tea. She had started keeping a pitcher made, the way Merriam used to. If Isabel kept her mind on John James, she wouldn’t have to think about Harry. She wouldn’t have to wonder whether Merriam had discovered what Harry was up to, and what Harry might have done about that.

Divers wore hoods sometimes with their wet suits. Harry was a diver. She didn’t want to go on from there and ask herself whether Harry was the man wearing the hood, the figure who had terrified Merriam.

John James’s story was complete. Isabel had had the images in her head since she was a girl. She finished her tea and put her glass down, mulling over each element of the tale. River Pete, the tramp. He was just a peripheral character and she had never thought much about him, but she found herself wondering what had happened to River Pete.

River Pete had lived on the beach in a shack that blew away in the storm. He did odd jobs at a store, Pursey’s store. He and John James sometimes went hunting or fishing together. River Pete had helped John James clear the fallen trees. His final appearance in the tale came when Merriam saw him at the pump by the back door, where he was washing mud off his hands and beard.

River Pete might have known something about the bottle. He was there that day. He might have known where John James got a piece of porcelain from the
Esperanza.

He might’ve, but he would be long dead by now. Isabel didn’t know whether he’d stayed in the area. She didn’t even know his last name. It was a shame she’d never asked Merriam.

There might be other old-timers around who remembered him. People who would know, at least, whether he’d stayed around, or had children. River Pete had worked at a store, so he would have been a familiar face.

Isabel went to the phone table and found the
St. Elmo and Vicinity
directory. Pursey’s store. Merriam had mentioned the store in other reminiscences. As far as Isabel knew, it didn’t exist anymore. She had the impression it had been the place nearest Cape St. Elmo to buy supplies.

She leafed through the directory. Each community was listed separately. No Purseys in St. Elmo, none on Cape St. Elmo, none in Westpoint. She riffled through the P’s in the rest of the book. Nothing, nothing, nothing, noth— jackpot. Not one, not two, but three Purseys— J.G., N.K., and L.B.— listed at Deep Creek.

Deep Creek, to Isabel’s faint recollection, was a tiny community on the edge of the river swamp, at least twenty-five miles away. She probably couldn’t find it without a map.

She drummed her fingers on the open page. J. G. Pursey, N. K. Pursey, L. B. Pursey. An embarrassment of riches.

Thinking hard, she was startled when the phone rang. She heard Harry’s voice, and her fingers tightened on the receiver.

“I was hoping I’d catch you,” he said. She heard conversation and music in the background. “Can I stop by tonight?”

“No. No, you can’t.” She wasn’t ready to see Harry.

“Listen, Isabel—”

“No, Harry.”

She pressed the button to break the connection. She ran her finger down the page to the telephone number of J. G. Pursey.

Buddy Burke sat on a stump at the edge of a field. Twilight was descending.

Another night on the road, and Buddy was so hungry he couldn’t keep track of anything besides his hunger. Buddy had done various stupid things since he’d escaped, and he’d done some of them because he was too hungry to think straight.

Like throwing away the motorcycle. The thought of it brought tears to Buddy’s eyes. That bike had gotten him past Alma before it ran out of gas. If he had been himself he would have checked the gauge, but he hadn’t been himself, and when the cycle ran out of gas, Buddy got mad. So what he did was wheel it across the shoulder and push it down the culvert, all the time yelling,
“Run
out of gas, you son of a bitch!”

Losing (Buddy preferred to call it losing) the cycle had taken the heart out of Buddy, but he had continued walking through the woods, miles and miles of woods. He lost any sense of where he was. He had intended to head for the coast, but here he was at a field, and no coast anywhere around.

Buddy needed food, not the bits of this and that— candy bars and peanut butter crackers and jerky sticks— he’d been stealing and eating. He stood up and plunged his hand in the pocket of his new jeans. He had gotten the jeans this afternoon, taken them off a clothesline. He’d needed to change clothes so he wouldn’t fit whatever description they’d put out. He had buried his other pants, piling pine straw on the place to hide the dug-up earth.