In the green, squall-glow of a Friday afternoon, April 11th, I returned home from the Everglades, and a ridiculous search for swamp aliens that my friend Tomlinson had dragged me on, to find another old friend, and one of the world’s bright, independent ladies, Sally Carmel, waiting on my deck.
The recently widowed Sally Carmel Minster, I would soon learn.
She met me at the top of the stairs. When she came into my open arms, it was more of a collapse than a friendly hug. I held her close, feeling her breath on my ear. “Did you see him? You walked right past the guy.”
I said, “Guy, what guy?”
“The one who’s been following me for the last two weeks. Big guy with a shaved head. Like a pro wrestler. The kind you see on TV.”
She stopped me when I tried to pull away. “Don’t turn around. He’s in the mangroves. I’ve been pretending like I don’t know he’s there. It’s what I always do when I know he’s following me. He’s right behind you, watching us with binoculars.”
I held her away from me, hands on shoulders, looking her over from head to toe-not an uncommon thing to do if you have not seen someone in a long, long time. And I had not seen Sally in a very long time.
It’d been, what, probably five or six years since she’d visited my little stilt house on Dinkin’s Bay. At least three years since our last phone conversation. It was at a time when her marriage was on the rocks again, and she’d nearly accepted my invitation to spend a week on Guava Key, a members-only resort where I’d been hired to do a fish count.
Our friendship dates back to childhood. We both spent early years in the little mangrove village of Mango, south of Naples, Gulf coast of Florida. It was back when I lived with my crazed, manipulative uncle, Tucker Gatrell, and his lifelong partner, Joseph Egret.
Joseph was an Everglades Indian with an enormous heart. He was one of those rare adults who forged friendships with children naturally, sincerely. In later years, it was Joseph who helped rekindle the friendship between Sally and me during her brief separation. It was a tough time for a good lady. Because she was certain the marriage was over, she and I became more than friends.
But the marriage wasn’t over.
Our relationship ended abruptly when Sally returned to her estranged Miami husband, a high-powered, alpha male named Geoff Minster. He was an architect or a developer-something like that-and he’d lured her back by offering her the chance to help him design some big project.
End of our romance. End of all contact. It is a common, modern phenomenon. Lovers separate, then gradually or abruptly orbit away, trajectories increasingly dissimilar, until one member vanishes, never to reappear. It is a death, of sorts, and it has happened all too often in my life.
When I’d thought of Sally-and I sometimes did-I assumed that it was unlikely her life would ever again intersect with my own. She’d patched a broken marriage. Presumably, she’d been rewarded with the accoutrements of that union: a stable home life, her own work, her own new circle of friends somewhere in or near the concrete swarm that is Miami. Maybe a houseful of babies, too.
But now here she was, standing on the open deck of my little house and lab built on stilts in the shallow water of Dinkin’s Bay, Sanibel Island, Florida.
Looking into her face, her lime-blue eyes, I said, “Why in the world would anyone want to follow you. A stalker, you mean?”
“No. A private investigator, or whatever they’re called these days. I’ve called the police a couple of times, but it hasn’t done any good. He’s been sneaking around, watching me off and on for the last two weeks. Maybe longer, because that’s when I first spotted him. Following me across the state from Coconut Grove, clear to Sanibel-this, I didn’t expect. It’s getting scary now, and I’m sick of it.”
I asked again, “But why? ”
“I think it has to do with Geoff, my husband.”
“Your husband? Does he think you’re having an affair?”
Why else would he have her followed?
“No, it’s not that. I’d never do something like that. My husband. .. Geoff, he disappeared. He’s dead.”
It took me a few moments before I could find the voice to answer. “ Dead. Sally, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t hear a thing about it.”
“I wish I felt the same. But I don’t. Six months ago, October twenty-seventh, on a fishing trip to Bimini, Geoff supposedly fell overboard. It was at night, so no one realized it until the next morning. No witnesses. His body was never found.”
I said, “‘Supposedly.’”
“I don’t believe it. I’ve never believed it. I don’t think the insurance company does, either. If the man out there is a private investigator, they probably hired him.”
I said, “Good God,” surprised by her reappearance, by the situation, by the implicit obligation. Friendship comes with responsibilities-reliability during crisis being among them. If an acquaintance does not behave accordingly and dependably, he or she is not your friend.
“The insurance company doesn’t want to pay off?”
Sally was shaking her head. “No, of course they don’t. But they will. They’ll have no choice. Not with all the evidence my attorney’s presented to the circuit court-which she says is standard in any death settlement case where the body hasn’t been found. Otherwise, the state waits five years before issuing a death certificate.
“My attorney’s really first rate. She knows how the system works. Which means they’re going to have to pay. A big figure with lots of zeros behind it deposited right into a money market account. She expects the court to rule in our favor within a couple of weeks. Two weeks-that’s about the same time I noticed skinhead in his car, following me.”
“Has he ever said anything? Confronted you?”
“No.”
“Have you been getting any hang-up calls?”
If he was a stalker, not a P.I., hang-up calls would be evi dential.
She replied, “No. I occasionally get a hang-up, like everyone else, but not enough to worry about.”
I put my arm over her shoulder, and began to walk her up the wooden steps toward my house, still not risking a glance behind me. “What’d he say when the police questioned him?”
“The guy? They’ve never managed to catch him. He’s pretty tricky. They think maybe he has a scanner or something, because he’s always gone by the time they show up. Or that I’m nuts and imagining things. So maybe I’m glad he’s out there and you’ll see him, too. If he’s still there. I was beginning to doubt my own sanity.”
Standing, holding the screen door wide open for her, I finally turned and took a quick look shoreward.
Sally was not imagining things.
There he was: a large man trying to hide himself in the mangroves, binoculars in hand, using them to scan the area in our direction.
“Nothing wrong with your sanity,” I told her. “Maybe the Sanibel police will be luckier. Let’s go inside and call.”
“Call if you want. ’Far as I’m concerned, though, he can stand in the bushes all night. Let the mosquitoes carry him away. Now that I’m here, back on the island, I feel safe. For the first time in a long, long time, I feel safe.”
I thought for a moment before I said, “That might not be a bad way to handle it. With this storm coming, let him stand out there and get soaked. Then I’ll use the noise, the rain in the trees, to slip around behind him. Maybe he’ll be more cooperative, more talkative, if I surprise him.”
She held herself away from me. “Storm? What storm? I don’t understand what you mean.”
Her reaction was disconcerting. Sally’s an accomplished sailor. She’d once sailed the entire west coast of Florida single-handedly, yet she hadn’t noticed the approaching rainsquall. The storm cell was to the north, sailing across the bay, the rain visible as a precise demarcation of platinum, dense as winter fog.
In a minute or two, the storm wall would collide with the warmer air of the shoreline.
Which was good, because Florida was just coming off one of its driest winters in history. It hadn’t rained for nearly a month.
“Doc, before you confront anybody, even try to talk to him, I need to tell you what happened, why I’m here. I don’t want you getting hurt on my account, or to cause you any trouble.”
Looking back at her, I said, “I don’t plan on getting hurt. Or hurting anyone.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
I shrugged. “First things first. You don’t like being followed. Maybe it’s time someone told him.”
“We could both go. I’m a big girl. I can talk to him myself.”
Before I could answer, a partition of Arctic wind blasted us, followed by the molecular sizzle of electrical discharge. Then the earth was shaken by a shock wave of expanding, superheated air that rattled the windows of my lab: klaaaa-BOOM.
“God, that was close!” She jumped through the doorway, pulling me with her, eyes wide, but what I noticed-to my personal discredit-was that the woman had aged disproportionately to our years apart, and she had not aged well. Gaunt cheeks, skin too loose on her face, frown lines, blond hair frazzled by lack of attention and too much hair spray.
I picked up my backpack-the only gear I’d taken for four nights in the Everglades-and, as I steered her through the breezeway that separates house from laboratory, she said, “The way my luck’s been going, I’m surprised it missed.”
It took me a moment to realize what she meant. She was talking about being struck by lightning.
I used my fingers to separate the blinds, and took a longer look at the man who was following Sally.
On Sanibel, people use binoculars to look at birds. We get lots and lots of birders because we have lots and lots of birds. Birders are a strange, but likable, type, not averse to standing out in the rain. But this guy wasn’t dressed like a birder.
Instead of the L.L. Bean, eco-awareness look, everything in earth tones, he was wearing a hooded blue rain slicker, the kind the yacht-club types wear, and dark slacks. A city-looking guy, standing there bareheaded, bald, in the bushes next to a couple of big buttonwood trees, thinking he was hidden, but he wasn’t.
I’ve been followed and spied upon more than once in my life. An earlier life, anyway. I’ve spent a lot of time in Third World countries, jungle areas, the remaining dark places on this earth. Which is why I much prefer the peaceful little community of Dinkin’s Bay, and my current occupation-a marine biologist who runs a small company, Sanibel Biological Supply. I collect sea specimens of all varieties and sell them to schools and labs and research facilities around the country.
From old habit, I made careful visual notes, then turned away from the window as Sally said, “Geez, Doc, it’s been such a long time since I’ve been inside this place. Like people always say, I remember it being bigger.”
I stood and watched her move around the single open room that is my living quarters. She wore sand-colored pleated shorts, a crisp cinnamon blouse and tan sandals. An expensive yacht-club effect. The colors looked good on her; made hers eyes bluer, her hair more golden than I remembered. I watched the lady turn dancerlike, in slow, nostalgic review.
There’s not much to see. The kitchen is a galley, really, not much bigger, or differently equipped than a galley found on a commercial-sized fishing boat: propane stove, small ship’s refrigerator, pots and pans hanging on hooks suspended from the ceiling.
Adjoining, but separated by a serving counter, is a wall of books, a floor lamp and a reading chair. My ancient Transoceanic shortwave radio, and smaller portable shortwave, both sit on a table beside the chair. My Celestron telescope stands at the north window nearby.
On all the walls, beneath the bare rafters, are copies of paintings that I like, or photographs, and sometimes recipes, tacked at eye level so I can look at them when I want.
What passes for sleeping quarters is a section along the south wall, shielded by a triad of beaded curtains. There’s a simple bed, a double stand-up closet, a locked sea trunk beneath the bed, a dispatch box that I also keep locked, more bookshelves, another reading lamp and a table that holds a brass windup alarm clock next to spare glasses.
As she moved around the place, she demonstrated her uneasiness with a rapid-fire monologue. “This whole day’s been such a blur, I don’t even know how I ended up here. I wanted to get away, so I told myself a weekend at the beach. After that, it was like the car was steering itself, driving way too fast across the ’Glades. Next thing I know, I’m at the Sanibel bridge, paying my toll, then at the Holiday Inn on Gulf Drive, telling myself I wasn’t going to bother you. That I had no right to impose.”
I stood, twisted the cap off a beer, and said softly, “Old friends are always welcome. Anytime, day or night. That doesn’t change.”
“You’ve been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe because of all the weird stuff that’s been happening. You, this little house-safe. That’s the way I think of you. Just like this island. Safe. So I’ve been sitting on your porch for an hour, maybe more. Kept getting up to leave, but my legs wouldn’t let me. Plus, with him standing out there in the mangroves, this just seemed the best place to be. I’m so sorry, Doc.”
Hysteria has a tone and, possibly, a pheromone signature. My immediate impression was that this old friend was teetering on the far, far brink of emotional collapse. To interrupt the talking jag, I crossed the room, pulled her close to me, and gave her a slightly stronger hug to silence her.
“Sally? Sally. I’ll listen later. Right now, let’s deal with the guy outside. Is there anything else I should know before I talk to him?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Give me just a couple of minutes to calm down, collect my thoughts. I don’t think you realize how hard this is for me. Coming here, seeing you.”
She took a few steps and touched her fingers to the old cast-iron Franklin stove in the northwest corner of the room. “This is new. A fireplace. I would have remembered, back when we… when we were dating. You put it in afterwards, right?”
I said, “I needed something. In winter, the wind blows up through cracks in the floor. We get a bad cold front, I can see my breath in here. The good heaters, I keep in the lab.”
I had to raise my voice to be heard, because the storm cell was now over us, rain loud as hail on my tin roof, water cascading over the windows, the light beyond a greenish-bronze. It was as if my little house had drifted beneath a mountain waterfall.
There was a rumble and boom of thunder, then another that caused the walls to vibrate. Sally hugged her arms around herself. “Whew! I’m cold now. It’s like winter in here.”
So I put her in the reading chair, and started to pour her a glass of red wine-once her beverage of preference-but she stopped me, saying, “No. No alcohol, please. I stopped using alcohol more than two years ago. I made a lot of changes in my life two years ago, and for the better, believe me. Maybe some herbal tea?”
Herbal tea I’ve got. Tomlinson brings me boxes of the stuff, then forgets he’s brought it, and so brings more. I keep a thirty-two-ounce screw-top specimen jar filled with a garden variety of bags, identifiable only by their little paper tabs.
I checked the window again. Through a waterfall-blur, I could see that the man was still out there: a dark shape hun kered beneath the buttonwood. If nothing else, he was vigilant.
There was already lighter pine and newspaper in the stove. I took just enough time to light the fire, and put water on to boil, asking her, “What else can you tell me about the guy outside? I don’t suppose you know what kind of car he drives?”
“I’ve seen it enough in my rearview mirror. One of those big shiny cars, luxury American model. It was black, almost new.”
“Your car?”
“A blue BMW, the sedan. A present from Geoff just before he disappeared. He was generous. That much I can’t fault him for.”
“Anything else?”
She shook her head.
I told her, “Then pull your chair up to the fire, wait for the water to boil. Warm up; enjoy your tea. I won’t be gone long.”
As I went out the door, I heard her say, “Be careful. He’s a really big guy.”
“I’m going to talk to him, that’s all.”
“Okay. But don’t get hurt. Believe me, it’s not worth it.”
Something else had been added to her tonal inflections, and it is among the saddest of human sounds: the sound of self-loathing.