Shadowed Paradise (11 page)

“
Not a retirement home,” Claire
remarked dryly.

“
No way,” Brad agreed. “You may not get
any lookers at all, you know. Not even the curious. Big houses in
horse country tend to be hard to sell.”

“
Even one or two visitors will give me
practice.” Claire’s eager expectancy faded abruptly. Had Brad
Blue’s job offer vanished along with his interest? Hastily, she
turned away and began to lay out the guest book, information
sheets, and a stack of Don Andersen’s cards on the dining room
table.

“
Claire, when you’re done, I’d like to
talk to you.”

Oh, God, he was going to take it all back.
Diane had won.

Claire neatened the stacks of paper,
brochures, and financial sheets from a mortgage company, lining
them precisely side by side. When she could procrastinate no
longer, she forced her feet across the pale sculptured tweed of the
Berber carpet. With careful precision she sat down on the bright
floral print sofa, put her feet flat on the floor, folded her hands
in her lap.

Her show of dignity was lost on her
companion. Brad stood with his hands behind his back, staring out
the glass-paneled wall toward the lake. The silence lengthened.
Claire struggled to keep a professional façade. Brad was searching
for the words to tell her he was just doing his ex-wife a favor by
being kind to her very lowly employee
.
Well, get on with it, damn it. How long do I have to
suffer?

After a swift toss of his shoulders, Brad
crossed the room and lowered himself into an upholstered chair that
matched the sofa. He faced her, his expression stern. “Claire, I
want you to listen to me very carefully. What I’m about to tell you
is confidential information, but I can’t just leave you here
without a warning.”

A cool breeze swept Claire’s whirling brain.
Brad wasn’t delivering a so-long-it’s-been-good-to-know-you
speech?

“
Did you hear about Betty Siffert, the
Realtor who was found in the pool at her Open House?”

She
would
manage a rational reply, she really would.
“There was a warning on the MLS computer, but it was an accident,
wasn’t it?”

“
Maybe not.” Brad took his cell phone
out of his shirt pocket and laid it on the coffee table in front of
her. “I have friends in the Sheriff’s Department. Betty Siffert had
sex before she drowned. The odds are it was rape.”

Oh, God
. “Who?
What? Are they
sure
?” she
stammered.

Brad’s brilliant blue eyes held her fast.
“They’re sure.”

Dear God . . .

“
Sorry, Claire. I didn’t mean to
terrorize you. Frighten, maybe. Terrorize, no. There are at least a
hundred Open Houses every week, and the only complaint is that no
one shows up. All I’m saying is, don’t accept anyone at face value.
Keep the phone in your hand. Don’t hesitate to use it.
Promise.”

“
Thanks a lot.” Claire’s sarcasm was
palpable. “Now that I’m utterly terrified, you’re going to leave me
here alone.”

Brad stood up, the severity of his manner
dissolving into a glimmer of amusement. “Well now, if I thought I
could keep my hands off you . . .” He shook his head mournfully.
“Sorry, might shock the paying customers. Phil wouldn’t like
it.”

He ambled toward the door before Claire could
come up with even the most lame response. Halfway there, he paused
and turned back to catch the wide-eyed question in her eyes. “Have
you made plans for the fireworks?”

“
Fireworks?” Claire repeated blankly.
Surely fireworks in Florida would self-combust.

A smile tilted one corner of his mouth. “I
forgot. You’ve probably never been here this time of year.
Fireworks for the Fourth are a big tradition. People hip to hip on
the beach, lined up along the waterway, the drawbridges. The boat
flotilla stretches out for a mile offshore. It makes for the mother
of all traffic jams, but only a Scrooge would miss it. I’ll drive
if you and Jamie bring the picnic.”

She was going to melt at his feet. Kiss the
tips of his scruffy boots.

She was going to kill him.

Somehow her mask of sangfroid held firm.
“Jamie will be thrilled,” she told him. “What time?”

The blue eyes gleamed as he sketched a
salute, acknowledging the subtlety of the hit. “Want to catch the
band concert too? How about four o’clock?”

The details were quickly finalized, and then
he was gone, leaving Claire surrounded by the silence of a house
set on eight acres “out back of beyond” as her grandmother had
called it when she heard about Claire being drafted for a T & T
Open House.

Claire fished a paperback out of her
carryall, settled onto the sofa, and attempted to read. Ordinarily,
she would have enjoyed the peace and quiet, the wonder of a few
moments of heavenly privacy. Instead, after Brad’s warning, she was
beginning to understand that old phrase about silence being
deafening.

She fidgeted, put down the book, picked up
the cell phone, made sure she understood how it worked. Battery
okay. Lots of bars. Comforted, Claire returned to her book.

On any map of Pine Grove, an area ten miles
southeast of Golden Beach, a close-packed city appeared to stretch
over fifty square miles. Reality was quite different. When Stan
Kolchek moved to Pine Grove fifteen years earlier, the map had
looked the same. In actuality, Pine Grove had consisted of a block
of storefronts on each side of a two-lane Tamiami Trail with a
small cluster of modest homes not far behind the storefronts. All
the rest was ghost town.

The vast checkerboard of roads—platted,
bulldozed and paved during one of Florida’s many failed
boomtimes–-was the ultimate manifestation of the proverbial road to
nowhere. The macadam ran in absolutely straight lines through
forests of tall Florida pines where the survey stakes marking
carefully divided lots had long since turned to dust.

When Stan Kolchek came to Pine Grove,
everywhere he looked there were roads. Roads with tufts of grass
thrusting up through cracks in the pavement. Roads forever cut off
by the building of the Interstate. Roads that dead-ended in the
middle of nowhere. Roads where teenagers drag-raced. Had beer
parties. Went parking. Roads where men hunted wild hogs. And other
people’s cows. Perfectly straight empty roads that made ideal
landing strips for small planes on private midnight forays into the
heart of South Central Florida, only a mile or so from an
Interstate that led south to Miami and north to Tampa, Orlando and
Tallahassee.

But the Grove had changed. Stan Kolchek
wasn’t all that pleased by the advent of civilization. Pine Grove
now had three unpretentious shopping centers, a couple of good
restaurants and a video store. He was no longer the only person
living in isolated splendor at the end of a road four miles from
the highway. His nearest neighbor was now only a mile away.

Civilization! Stan spat, narrowly missing a
fleet-footed chameleon skittering across the cement floor of his
dilapidated front porch. He was sitting in an old lawn chair, its
webbing faded, the aluminum spotted by the corrosion of the Florida
climate. He liked peace and quiet, the gentle flow of the drainage
canal that bordered one side of his property. One of many dug by
the long defunct development company, the canal ran as straight and
true as the roads. If Stan had owned a boat, he could have, with
patience, gone all the way to the broad mouth of the Calusa River
and out into one of Florida’s largest harbors, eventually out to
the gulf itself.

He never would. But it was nice to know he
could.

Stan and his wife Irina had cleared only
enough land to build their modest two-bedroom home. Around them was
a forest of pines that had somehow escaped the determined slash and
cut of Florida’s turpentine and lumber boom. Irina had passed on
four years before. Now Stan had only Burt for company. Burt whose
parentage was so mixed that Stan had never tried to figure it out.
“A dash of bloodhound,” he’d say. “Must be. Damn dog’s always
bringing home bones.”

The area was full of creatures. Alligators,
wild pig, bobcats, raccoons, possums, armadillos, squirrels. Even
bears, some said. Snakes weren’t much for bones, but nearly
everything else left traces behind.

Damn dog brought ‘em all home. Presented a
few to Stan. Buried the rest in what was left of the garden Stan
had not kept it up after Irina was gone.

Burt, his brown flanks quivering with pride,
came trotting out of the woods and headed for the house. Eyes must
be getting old, Stan thought. He couldn’t quite see what
broken-down treasure the dumb mutt had brought home this time.

After more than hour of nervous anticipation,
Claire heard the faint sound of a car pulling up outside. A quick
peek out the window revealed nothing more menacing than a very
ordinary couple of early middle age wandering slowly up the walk,
admiring the landscaping, the husband bending back, shading his
eyes, to check the roof.

Relief. Blessed relief. Claire, still
clutching the phone in a death grip, put on her broadest smile and
hastened to open the door.

The wife was a pharmacist, the husband owned
a marina on Manatee Bay. For her the commute would be easy; for
him, not. With the warm reality of people willing to share their
lives and needs with her, Claire’s nerves snapped back to normal.
It wasn’t nice of Brad to scare her like that.

Although only one other family found their
way to the rural neighborhood that afternoon, they proved the
validity of Phil’s decision to ask Claire to hold the house open.
Doctor Maglione and his wife were trailed by two young children.
Mrs. Maglione’s rounded figure revealed they were well on their way
toward number three. For the doctor, who worked at a psychiatric
hospital just off the Interstate, the commute to Manatee Bay would
be easy. For his wife the house was an ideal place to raise a
growing family. Claire felt a thrill of accomplishment when the
Magliones spent three-quarters of an hour inspecting every aspect
of the house and stables. She promised Don Andersen would call them
with additional information the very next day. There was, Claire
discovered, an amazing amount of satisfaction in helping people
find the place they would call home for the next ten or twenty
years.

Adrenalin still pumping, Claire flopped onto
the couch with a sigh. She was actually enjoying herself.

In the complete stillness of the now empty
house the cell phone’s ring shrilled like a scream. Claire’s hello
sparked a moment of stunned silence followed by, “Who the hell are
you?”

“
I beg your pardon.” It was the
freezing tone of Claire Langdon of the Upper East Side, Manhattan,
and Bedford, New York.

“
I was calling Brad Blue. So who are
you?”

In spite of the harsh, peremptory tone,
Claire recognized the voice. She ought to. She heard it every night
on the evening news. If there was one thing Claire had learned from
her mother and her grandmother, it was how to be a lady. “I’m very
sorry,” she apologized in her most polished professional voice.
“I’m holding an Open House for T & T Realty and Phil Tierney
borrowed Brad Blue’s phone for me. For safety reasons. Perhaps if
you tried his home phone?”

“
You’re the one, aren’t you? That woman
from the bridge?”

“
Uh, yes.” Claire winced at her
momentary slip from aplomb.

“
Well, let me tell you, little girl,
there’s no way you can keep a man like Brad Blue. He’ll be back to
me in ten seconds flat. All I have to do is crook my little
finger.”

“
When Brad comes by to pick up his
phone, I’ll be sure to tell him you called.”

The line went dead.

When pulling up Open House signs and tossing
them into her trunk in the stifling warmth of late afternoon,
Claire was still smiling. She rather thought she’d won that
one.

Phil Tierney’s strict code of professional
ethics never allowed her to be late for an appointment. She sat at
the imposing mahogany conference table in the Board Room of the
Golden Beach Library and watched her fellow committee members come
straggling in to the meeting. Elinor Johannesen—toned, buffed, and
polished in a manner only major expenditure can create—took her
seat at the head of the table as Chairperson of the Library
Expansion Committee. Mayor Henry Wells had all the right attributes
for political position in Golden Beach—a heavy thatch of nearly
white hair, a ready smile, a hearty handshake. And the bark of a
tiger when a citizen exceeded the allotted three minutes to present
a grievance before the city council. He was also that rarity, a
native of Golden Beach.

Virginia Bentley came in, squinting as her
eyes adjusted to the light. Phil jumped to her feet and hurried to
the elderly author’s side, guiding her to a chair next to her own.
They had known each other for years, but each was aware of a
certain new awkwardness, their conversation confined to library
matters, carefully skirting any mention of Claire Langdon or Brad
Blue.

Phil smiled and waved as Jordan Lovell
entered the room in his usual jaunty but elegant style. A handsome
man, somewhere in his early forties, Jordan had come to Florida
from Colorado eight or nine years ago. Armed with good looks,
charm, style, and what appeared to be an ample income, he had
quickly established himself as Calusa County’s most fashionable and
successful professional fundraiser.

“
That man could get money out of a
stone,” Ginny Bentley whispered in Phil’s ear as Lovell gracefully
lowered himself into the seat next to Elinor Johnson.