Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide (24 page)

Isabel had to get Kimmie Dee’s attention. She didn’t have time to work out niceties and refinements. Bracing herself against the wall, she inched her body up to the level of the window. She gathered her strength. She hurled herself against the rusted screen, rebounded like a pinball, and fell to the floor. The screen made a faint twang. She struggled back to the window. Kimmie Dee hadn’t even looked up.

Try again.
She repeated the process, throwing herself against the screen as hard as she could. This time, it ripped away from the frame. Isabel tumbled out the window and landed with a jarring thump on the floor of the upstairs veranda. Gasping, she dragged herself to the railing and looked out through the carved banisters.

Kimmie Dee had heard. She was standing, looking up at the house, frowning into the sun. Isabel struggled to her knees. Kimmie Dee called, “Isabel?”

Isabel stared at Kimmie Dee, willing the girl to comprehend what was going on and do something.

Kimmie Dee came closer, picking her way through the weeds. “Isabel?” she called again.

Isabel nodded vigorously.

When Kimmie Dee reached the house, she said, “What’s wrong? What’s that on your mouth?”

Help. Go get help,
Isabel bid her silently.

The girl said, “Mr. Stiles shot my daddy, Isabel. Just like I said he would.”

Oh no.
Isabel would have to deal with that later.
Go get help, Kimmie Dee.

“I better come up and help you,” Kimmie Dee said.

No! Don’t come up here!

Kimmie Dee was walking around the side of the house.

Isabel gritted her teeth. She didn’t know whether Kimmie Dee would be able to get in. She should have left the girl alone, not lured her over here and put her in danger.

After what seemed a long time, she heard light footfalls in the bedroom. Kimmie Dee’s head appeared at the window. The girl said, “Do you want me to untie you?”

Isabel nodded. Yes, she wanted Kimmie Dee to untie her.

Kimmie Dee tugged at the gag and pulled it down around Isabel’s neck. She said, “Now you can talk if you want to.”

Tears rushed to Isabel’s eyes. She ran her dry tongue over her swollen lips. After a few moments, she was able to croak, “Thanks, Kimmie Dee.”

“All right. You want me to do your hands now?”

“Yes. Hurry. We’re in a lot of trouble.”

Kimmie Dee moved to Isabel’s back and began picking at the rope. Every twitch hurt. The girl said, “Whoever tied this tied it tight.”

“Just keep trying.” Isabel bit her lip to keep herself from crying out. She said, “How did you get in?”

“The back door was open. Isabel, did you hear what I said about my daddy?”

“Yes. What happened?”

“He came back, and Mr. Stiles shot him. He’s in the hospital. I told him to go away, but he waited too long.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I think so. My mama keeps crying and crying. Looka there! I got one.”

When the first knot was undone, the others came more easily. In a few minutes, Isabel’s arms were loosened. She groaned as she moved her shoulders forward. The blood rushing into her hands was agony.

She tried to help Kimmie Dee free her ankles, fumbling with the knots with paralyzed fingers. She said, “Kimmie Dee, you should go now. Go and get help. Tell your mother to call the police.”

Kimmie Dee shook her head. “I want to stay with you.”

“I mean it. Go on. Tell your mother—”

“She won’t do it. She wouldn’t believe me.”

Isabel gave up. They pulled at the final knot, and Isabel’s legs were free.

She tried to stand, clutching at the railing, but at first her legs wouldn’t hold her. When at last she could stay shakily on her feet, she said, “Let’s go.”

Isabel limping, they hurried out of the bedroom. They were halfway down the stairs when Isabel heard footsteps on the back porch. Beside her, Kimmie Dee had heard them, too. Isabel felt the girl pulling back. She hissed, “Keep going! Go in the room at the foot of the stairs! Don’t make any noise!”

The two of them scrambled downward as the back door opened. They rounded the corner into the small sitting room across the hall from the parlor. This was where the radio had been, where Isabel did her homework and Merriam sat in the evenings crocheting afghans. It was empty now, dust curls in the corners. Isabel pushed Kimmie Dee against the wall and flattened herself beside the girl. The footsteps were in the kitchen now— and now crossing the dining room.

Isabel breathed shallowly through her mouth. She had forgotten about being thirsty, forgotten about aching ankles and wrists.

The steps were coming closer. The tread was measured, neither slow nor hurried. It was not the hesitant step of the explorer. The person in the hall knew where he was going.

He was at the foot of the stairs, only a few feet from them. He started to climb.

They had to cross the hall and go out the back. When he reached the top of the stairs, they were poised in the doorway.

Kimmie Dee was clinging to Isabel’s hand. Isabel whispered,
“Now,”
and they skittered across the hall, through the dining room, and into the kitchen.

A clattering noise came from upstairs and the steps started again, coming fast this time.

Isabel and Kimmie Dee flew through the kitchen and out the back door. The steps were coming down the stairs.
He’ll see us.
The words rushed into Isabel’s head as they ran out the back door. She dragged Kimmie Dee down the steps and the two of them, in desperate concert, crawled past the sagging lattice guard fence and took refuge under the house.

They lay on their stomachs in the dirt, panting. The footsteps thundered through the kitchen and across the porch, the floorboards rattling above their heads. The feet descended the steps and passed within less than a yard of Isabel’s face. She had every opportunity to recognize the worn deck shoes and khaki trousers. It was Harry Mercer.

Isabel and Kimmie Dee watched Harry’s feet as they pounded away from the house, around the corner of the shed, and into the woods. Isabel could hear him crashing toward the slough.

Something was pressing painfully against Isabel’s rib cage. She shifted positions and looked down. There was a hard semicircular ridge in the earth.

Kimmie Dee whispered, “Is he gone?”

Isabel eased herself forward to look, scraping her ribs again. She said, “I think so.” She listened a moment more. “Kimmie Dee, run for help. Make your mother listen, or call the police yourself. I mean it this time.”

Kimmie Dee did not argue. She slid out beside the steps and took off. Isabel saw Kimmie Dee’s bare legs flash as she rounded the corner of the house. Then she clambered out and struggled to her feet. Her adrenaline was pumping. She started after Harry. She wasn’t going to let him get away.

“I want to see Joy,” Buddy Burke said.

Ted Stiles nodded.

“Kimmie Dee, too. I want to see Kimmie Dee. And Toby.” Buddy blinked cigarette smoke out of his eyes. Stiles had gotten the nurse to put Buddy in a wheelchair and wheel him to a lounge down the hall. The room was closed, nobody sitting on the green Naugahyde furniture except Stiles. The windows looked out on pine trees. Across the room, the deputy studied the offerings of a soft-drink machine.

“Hey, bro,” Buddy called to the deputy. “Hey, lawman.”

The deputy turned.

“Bring me a Co’Cola, hey?”

Not until Stiles gave him the high sign did the deputy start feeding change into the machine.

Tapping ash into a Styrofoam cup, Stiles said, “I’m not sure how Mrs. Burke would feel about it, but I could—”

“You stay away from her.”

“I was going to say, I could have somebody talk to her.”

Buddy looked at Stiles and thought,
This chain-smoking sucker has got me by the balls.

The deputy brought the Coke over. When he handed it to Buddy, he said, “Get you something, Mr. Stiles?”

Stiles shook his head and the deputy returned to his post by the machines. “I’m willing to explore the possibility of letting you see your family right away, providing you’re willing to help me out,” Stiles said.

Buddy swigged his drink. “What the hell else are we talking about?”

Twin streams of smoke poured from Stiles’s nostrils. “All right, then,” Stiles said.

“Don’t forget the other, either,” Buddy said. “The taking into consideration part.”

“Remember I haven’t made you any promises.”

“Damn it, you said—”

Ted Stiles didn’t even blink. “I said I’d see what I could do. And I will.”

Buddy slumped in his wheelchair. He was sick and tired. That summed it up: sick and tired. “I never wanted to hurt nobody,” he said. “All I did was, a couple of times I hauled in some weed. A fellow over at Westpoint and his cousin was growing it. I told about that when I got arrested.”

“Right.” Stiles tapped out his cigarette. He opened a tan briefcase and pulled out a yellow pad with scribbling on it.

“I never hurt a solitary soul,” Buddy said. “All I wanted was to make money for my family, and—”

“Cut the crap,” Stiles said.

Buddy was miffed. What was the point if he couldn’t tell it his way? Stiles kept studying his scribbles, and after a while Buddy continued. “You know, I had this boat. Your people confiscated it. I was berthing it at the Beachcomber. Whatever happened to it, by the way?”

“Sent to South Florida.”

Buddy mourned for his boat a second or two. Another good thing gone to hell. “In the berth next to mine was the
Miss Kathy.
Owned by a dive captain named Harry Mercer. You know him?”

Stiles, writing on his pad, didn’t answer.

“Harry’s a charter captain, takes out dive parties, fishing parties. Well, I was in and out of there a lot, going to and from Westpoint, and I noticed that Harry and his deckhand kept taking the boat out by themselves, no paying customers on board. I started to wonder what they was up to.”

Stiles grunted. “You figured they were cutting in on your trade?”

“I reckon so.” It seemed long ago, those days when Buddy was free. “Anyway, I started to keep an eye out. Sure enough, I saw them come in and carry off ice chests and stuff and put them in Harry’s truck. Now, you take a few cold drinks when you go out fishing, but this was different. So what I did—” Buddy stopped. “You aren’t going to get me for this, too, are you?”

Ted Stiles waved at him to go on.

“I waited till they left one evening and I sneaked onto Harry’s boat. One thing that interested me was a big old tank they had built on deck. I wanted to know if they was hauling weed in there. It was fastened with a lock and chain, but there was enough slack so I could pull the top up and shine a flashlight down in there. You know what I saw?”

“Bales of marijuana?”

“No siree.” It was a true pleasure to get one up on Ted Stiles. “The thing was half full of water, and in that water was some cannonballs, and part of something that looked like a musket. That’s what was in there.”

Buddy didn’t want to spoil his own surprise, so he went on: “Those boys had found a wreck and was hauling stuff out of it. And they was keeping it such a secret, you can bet your bobtail there was more in it than a few cannonballs.”

The veins in Ted Stiles’s nose glowed brighter. “Gold, you mean?”

“That’s what I was figuring.”

“So what did you do?”

“Do? Nothing.” Buddy hadn’t had a chance to do anything. Ted Stiles hadn’t asked what he’d
intended
to do.

“You didn’t try to persuade them to let you in on it?”

“No!” Buddy acted like the idea had never occurred to him.

“Why not? Darryl Kelly arrested you before you got around to it?

Stiles obviously never gave anybody the benefit of the doubt. Although, in truth, it had been only a couple of days later that Kelly had caught Buddy and Buddy’s present difficulties commenced.

Buddy’s shoulder hurt. Now he really was tired. “Your friend Kelly pulled me in. I didn’t want to go to jail, you know? I cooperated right off the bat. But he told me I’d have to go, anyway.”

“It was your third offense. It’s the law.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said. But I thought if I could give him something good, they might make an exception, so I told him about Harry Mercer and the wreck. Taking stuff out of a wreck is illegal, too, unless you’ve got the permits.”

Stiles’s face was serious now. “What did Darryl say when you told him?”

“Laughed in my face.” The memory of it galled Buddy even now. “He thought I was making it up.”

“He must have decided to check it out, though,” Stiles said slowly.

“I told him, if they arrested somebody, I ought to get part of the treasure for turning them in. He laughed at that, too.”

“In the end, it didn’t turn out so funny.” Stiles closed his pad. “Harry Mercer, you said?”

“Yeah,” Buddy said. “I want to see Joy. And Kimmie Dee, and Toby.”

“I’ll work on it.” Stiles signaled the deputy to wheel Buddy back to his room.

Propelled by fury, Harry charged through the woods. The thought of the empty upstairs room made his legs pump like machinery. He barely felt the sweat coursing down his body, the hot breath whistling through his lungs.

I’ll find you, Scooter. If you’re not at the dock, I’ll
—

But Scooter was at the dock, pulling a tarp over a pile of stuff— the treasure, Harry’s treasure— that he’d loaded in the skiff.

Scooter had heard Harry coming. His head was turned Harry’s way, and when Harry burst out of the swamp, Scooter let go of the tarp.

Harry jumped at Scooter with an inarticulate cry of rage. His only desire in the world was to make Scooter suffer and then kill him. He actually prayed, for a split second, to be able to do just that.

Scooter was ready. His wiry body uncoiled at Harry, and Harry felt Scooter’s fingers around his throat. Harry said, “You son of a bitch—” and, a lucky shot, kneed Scooter in the balls.

Scooter howled and let go. When he bent forward, Harry kicked him in the ribs, but instead of falling down, Scooter, still bent double, sprang back at him. They wrestled on the uneven turf, neither with an advantage.