Duma Key

  Reba offered no opinion on this idea.

  "But what do I do? That wasn't like the paintings. That wasn't like the paintings at all!"

  But it was, and I knew it. Both paintings and visions originated in the human brain, and something in my brain had changed. I thought the change had come about as a result of just the right combination of injuries. Or the wrong one. Contracoup. Broca's area. And Duma Key. The Key was . . . what?

  "Amplifying it," I told Reba. "Isn't it?"

  She offered no opinion.

  "There's something here, and it's acting on me. Is it possible it even called me?"

  The notion made me break out in gooseflesh. Beneath me, the shells ground together as the waves lifted them and dropped them. It was all too easy to imagine skulls instead of shells, thousands of them, all gnashing their teeth at once when the waves came in.

  Was it Jack who had said there was another house somewhere out there in the toolies, falling apart? I thought so. When Ilse and I tried to drive that way, the road had gone bad in a hurry. So had Ilse's stomach. My own gut had been okay, but the stink of the encroaching flora had been nasty and the itch in my missing arm had been worse. Wireman had looked alarmed when I told him about our attempted exploration. Duma Key Road's no excursion for a guy in your condition, he'd said. The question was, exactly what was my condition?

  Reba went on offering no opinion.

  "I don't want this to be happening," I said softly.

  Reba only stared up at me. I was a nasty man, that was her opinion.

  "What good are you?" I asked, and threw her aside. She landed facedown on her pillow with her bottom up and her pink cotton legs spread, looking quite the little slut. Ouuuu you nasty man, indeed.

  I dropped my head, looked at the carpet between my knees, and rubbed the nape of my neck. The muscles there were tight and knotted. They felt like iron. I hadn't had one of my bad headaches in awhile, but if those muscles didn't loosen soon, I'd be having a whopper tonight. I needed to eat something, that would be a start. Something comforting. One of those calorie-stuffed frozen dinners sounded about right--the kind where you slice the wrapping over the frozen meat and gravy, blast it for seven minutes in the microwave, then chow down like a motherfucker.

  But I sat still awhile longer. I had many questions, and most were probably beyond my ability to answer. I recognized that and accepted it. I had learned to accept a lot since the day I'd had my confrontation with the crane. But I thought I had to try for at least one answer before I could bring myself to eat, hungry as I was. The phone on the bedtable had come with the house. It was charmingly old-fashioned, the Princess model with a rotary dial. It sat on a directory that was mostly Yellow Pages. I turned to the skinny white section, thinking I wouldn't find Elizabeth Eastlake listed, but I did. I dialed the number. It rang twice and then Wireman answered.

  "Hello, Eastlake residence."

  There was hardly a trace in that perfectly modulated voice of the man who had laughed hard enough to break his chair, and all at once this seemed like the world's worst idea, but I saw no other option.

  "Wireman? This is Edgar Freemantle. I need help."

  6--The Lady of the House

  i

  The following afternoon found me once more sitting at the little table at the end of the El Palacio de Asesinos boardwalk. The striped umbrella, although ripped, was still serviceable. A breeze chilly enough to warrant sweatshirts was blowing in off the water. Little scars of light danced across the table-top as I talked. And I talked, all right--for almost an hour, refreshing myself with sips of green tea from a glass Wireman kept filled. At last I stopped and for a little while there was no sound but the mild whisper of the incoming waves, breaking and running up the strand.

  Wireman must have heard enough wrong in my voice the night before to concern him, because he'd offered to come in the Palacio golf cart immediately. He said he could stay in touch with Miss Eastlake via walkie-talkie. I told him it could wait a little. It was important, I said, but not urgent. Not in the 911 sense, at least. And it was true. If Tom were to commit suicide on his cruise, there was little I could do to prevent it. But I didn't think he'd do it as long as his mother and brother were with him.

  I had no intention of telling Wireman about my furtive hunt through my daughter's purse; that was something of which I'd grown more rather than less ashamed. But once I started, beginning with LINK-BELT, I couldn't stop. I told him almost everything, finishing with Tom Riley standing at the head of the stairs leading up to Little Pink, pale and dead and minus an eye. I think part of what kept me going was the simple realization that Wireman couldn't commit me to the nearest lunatic asylum--he had no legal authority. Part of it was that, attracted as I was by his kindness and cynical good cheer, he was still a stranger. Sometimes--often, I think--telling stories that are embarrassing or even downright crazy is easier when you're telling them to a stranger. Mostly, though, I pushed on out of pure relief: I felt like a man expressing snake-venom from a bite.

  Wireman poured himself a fresh glass of tea with a hand that was not quite steady. I found that interesting and disquieting. Then he glanced at his watch, which he wore nurse-style, with the face on the inside of his wrist. "In half an hour or so I really have to go up and check her," he said. "I'm sure she's fine, but--"

  "What if she wasn't?" I asked. "If she fell, or something?"

  He pulled a walkie-talkie from the pocket of his chinos. It was as slim as a cell phone. "I make sure she always carries hers. There are also Rapid Response call-buttons all over the house, but--" He tapped a thumb on his chest. "I'm the real alarm system, okay? The only one I trust."

  He looked out at the water and sighed.

  "She's got Alzheimer's. It's not too bad yet, but Dr. Hadlock says it'll probably move fast now that it's settled in. A year from now . . ." He shrugged almost sullenly, then brightened. "We have tea every day at four. Tea and Oprah. Why not come up and meet the lady of the house? I'll even throw in a slice of key lime pie."

  "Okay," I said. "It's a deal. Do you think she's the one who left that message on my answering machine about Duma Key not being a lucky place for daughters?"

  "Sure. Although if you expect an explanation--if you expect her to even remember--good luck. But I can help you a little, maybe. You said something about brothers and sisters yesterday, and I didn't get a chance to correct you. Fact is, all Elizabeth's sibs were girls. All daughters. The oldest was born in 1908 or thereabouts. Elizabeth came onstage in 1923. Mrs. Eastlake died about two months after having her. Some kind of infection. Or maybe she threw a clot . . . who's to know at this late date? That was here, on Duma Key."

  "Did the father remarry?" I still couldn't remember his name.

  Wireman helped me out. "John? No."

  "You're not going to tell me he raised six girls out here. That's just too gothic."

  "He tried, with the help of a nanny. But his eldest ran off with a boy. Miss Eastlake had an accident that almost killed her. And the twins . . ." He shook his head. "They were two years older than Elizabeth. In 1927 they disappeared. The presumption is they tried to go swimming, got swept away by an undertow, and drowned out there in the caldo grande."

  We looked at the water for a little while--those deceptively mild waves running up the beach like puppies--and said nothing. Then I asked if Elizabeth had told him all of this.

  "Some. Not all. And she's mixed up about what she does remember. I found a passing mention of an incident that had to be the right one on a Web site dedicated to Gulf coast history. Had a little e-mail correspondence with a guy who's a librarian in Tampa." Wireman raised his hands and waggled his fingers in a typing mime. "Tessie and Laura Eastlake. The librarian sent me a copy of the Tampa paper from April 19th, 1927. The headline on the front page is very stark, very bleak, very chilling. Three words. THEY ARE GONE."

  "Jesus," I said.

  "Six years old. Elizabeth would have been four, old enough to understand what had happened. Ma
ybe old enough to read a newspaper headline as simple as THEY ARE GONE. The twins dead and Adriana, the oldest, eloped off to Atlanta with one of his plant managers . . . no wonder John had had enough of Duma for awhile. He and the remaining three moved to Miami. Many years later, he moved back here to die, and Miss Eastlake cared for him." Wireman shrugged. "Pretty much as I'm caring for her. So . . . do you see why an old lady with onset-Alzheimer's might consider Duma a bad place for daughters?"

  "I guess so, but how does an old lady with onset-Alzheimer's find the phone number of her new tenant?"

  Wireman gave me a sly look. "New tenant, old number, autodial function on all the phones back there." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Any other questions?"

  I gaped at him. "She has me on autodial?"

  "Don't blame me; I came in late on this movie-show. My guess is that the Realtor who handles things for her programmed the rental properties into the phones. Or maybe Miss Eastlake's business manager. He pops down from St. Petersburg every six weeks or so to make sure she's not dead and I'm not stealing the Spode. I'll ask him the next time he shows up."

  "So she can call any house on the north end of the Key at the touch of a button."

  "Well . . . yeah. I mean, they are all hers." He patted my hand. "But you know what, muchacho? I think your button is going to have a little nervous breakdown this evening."

  "No," I said, not even thinking about it. "Don't do that."

  "Ah," Wireman said, exactly as if he understood. And who knows, maybe he did. "Anyway, that explains your mystery caller--although I have to tell you, explanations have a way of thinning out on Duma Key. As your story demonstrates."

  "What do you mean? Have you had . . . experiences?"

  He looked at me squarely, his large tanned face inscrutable. The chilly late January wind gusted, blowing sand around our ankles. It also lifted his hair, once again revealing the coin-shaped scar above his right temple. I wondered if someone had poked him with the neck of a bottle, maybe in a bar fight, and tried to imagine someone getting mad at this man. It was hard to do.

  "Yes, I've had . . . experiences," he said, and hooked the first two fingers of each hand into little quotation marks. "It's what makes children into . . . adults. Also what gives English teachers something to bullshit about in first year . . . lit courses." Each time with the air-quotes.

  Okay, he didn't want to talk about it, at least not then. So I asked him how much of my story he believed.

  He rolled his eyes and sat back in his chair. "Don't try my patience, vato. You might be mistaken about a few things, but you ain't nuts. I got a lady up there . . . sweetest lady in the world and I love her, but sometimes she thinks I'm her Dad and it's Miami circa nineteen thirty-four. Sometimes she pops one of her china people into a Sweet Owen cookie-tin and tosses it into the koi pond behind the tennis court. I have to get em out when she naps, otherwise she pitches a bitch. No idea why. I think by this summer she may be wearing an adult didey full-time."

  "Point?"

  "The point is I know loco, I know Duma, and I'm getting to know you. I'm perfectly willing to believe you had a vision of your friend dead."

  "No bullshit?"

  "No bullshit. Verdad. The question is what you're going to do about it, assuming you're not eager to see him into the ground for--may I be vulgar?--buttering what used to be your loaf."

  "I'm not. I did have this momentary thing . . . I don't know how to describe it . . ."

  "Was it a momentary thing where you felt like chopping off his dick, then putting out his eyes with a hot toasting-fork? Was it that momentary thing, muchacho?" Wireman made the thumb and forefinger of one hand into a gun and pointed it at me. "I was married to a Mexican lassie, and I know jealousy. It's normal. Like a startle-reflex."

  "Did your wife ever . . ." I stopped, suddenly aware all over again that I'd only met this man the day before. That was easy to forget. Wireman was intense.

  "No, amigo, not to my knowledge. What she did was die on me." His face was perfectly expressionless. "Let's not go there, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Thing to remember about jealousy is it comes, it goes. Like the afternoon showers down here during the mean season. You're over it, you say. You should be, because you ain't her campesino no more. The question is what you're going to do about this other thing. How you going to keep this guy from killing himself? Because you know what happens when the happy-family cruise is over, right?"

  For a moment I said nothing. I was translating that last bit of Spanish, or trying to. You ain't her farmer no more, was that right? If so, it had a bitter ring of truth.

  "Muchacho? Your next move?"

  "I don't know," I said. "He's got e-mail, but what do I write to him? 'Dear Tom, I'm worried you're contemplating suicide, please reply soonest'? I bet he's not checking his e-mail while he's on vacation, anyway. He's got two ex-wives, and still pays alimony to one of them, but he's not close to either. There was one kid, but he died in infancy--spina bifida, I think--and . . . what? What?"

  Wireman had turned away and sat slouched in his chair, looking out at the water, where pelicans were diving for their own high tea. His body English suggested disgust.

  He turned back. "Quit squirming. You know damn well who knows him. Or you think you do."

  "Pam? You mean Pam?"

  He only looked at me.

  "Are you going to talk, Wireman, or only sit there?"

  "I have to check on my lady. She'll be up by now and she's going to want her four o'clockies."

  "Pam would think I'm crazy! Hell, she still thinks I'm crazy!"

  "Convince her." Then he relented a little. "Look, Edgar. If she's been as close to him as you think, she'll have seen the signs. And all you can do is try. Entiendes?"

  "I don't understand what that means."

  "It means call your wife."

  "She's my ex."

  "Nope. Until your mind changes, the divorce is just a legal fiction. That's why you give a shit what she thinks about your state of mind. But if you also care about this guy, you'll call her and tell her you have reason to think he's planning to highside it."

  He heaved himself out of his chair, then held out his hand. "Enough palaver. Come on and meet the boss. You won't be sorry. As bosses go, she's a pretty nice one."

  I took his hand and let him pull me out of what I presumed was a replacement beach chair. He had a strong grip. That was something else I'll never forget about Jerome Wireman; the man had a strong grip. The boardwalk up to the gate in the back wall was only wide enough for one, so I followed, limping gamely along. When he reached the gate--which was a smaller version of the one in front and looked as Spanish as Wireman's offhand patois--he turned toward me, smiling a little.

  "Josie comes in to clean Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she's willing to keep an ear out for Miss Eastlake during her afternoon nap--which means I could come down and look at your pictures tomorrow afternoon around two, if that suits."

  "How did you know I wanted you to? I was still working up the nerve to ask."

  He shrugged. "It's pretty obvious you want someone to look before you show them to the guy at that gallery. Besides your daughter and the kid who runs your errands, that is."

  "The appointment's on Friday. I'm dreading it."

  Wireman waggled his hand in the air and smiled. "Don't worry," he said. He paused. "If I think your stuff is crap, I'm going to tell you so."

  "That works."

  He nodded. "Just wanted to be clear." Then he opened the gate and led me into the courtyard of Heron's Roost, also known as Palacio de Asesinos.

  ii

  I'd already seen the courtyard, on the day I'd used the front entrance to turn around, but on that day I'd gotten little more than a glance. I'd mostly been concentrating on getting myself and my ashen-faced, perspiring daughter back to Big Pink. I'd noticed the tennis court and the cool blue tiles, but had missed the koi pool entirely. The tennis court was swept and ready for action, its paved surf
ace two shades darker than the courtyard tile. One turn of the chrome crank would bring the net taut and ready. A full basket of balls stood on wire stilts, and made me think briefly of the sketch Ilse had taken back to Providence with her: The End of the Game.

  "One of these days, muchacho," Wireman said, pointing at the court as we walked by. He had slowed down so I could catch up. "You and me. I'll take it easy on you--just volley-and-serve--but I hunger to swing a racket."

  "Is volley-and-serve what you charge for evaluating pictures?"

  He smiled. "I have a price, but that ain't it. Tell you later. Come on in."

  iii

  Wireman led me through the back door, across a dim kitchen with large white service islands and an enormous Westinghouse stove, then into the whispering interior of the house, which shone with dark woods--oak, walnut, teak, redwood, cypress. This was a Palacio, all right, old Florida style. We passed one book-lined room with an actual suit of armor brooding in the corner. The library connected with a study where paintings--not stodgy oil portraits but bright abstract things, even a couple of op-art eyepoppers--hung on the walls.

  Light showered down on us like white rain as we walked the main hall (Wireman walked; I limped), and I realized that, for all of the mansion's grandeur, this part of it was no more than a glorified dogtrot--the kind that separates sections of older and much humbler Florida dwellings. That style, almost always constructed of wood (sometimes scrapwood) rather than stone, even has a name: Florida Cracker.

  This dogtrot, filled with light courtesy of its long glass ceiling, was lined with planters. At its far end, Wireman hung a right. I followed him into an enormous cool parlor. A row of windows gave on a side courtyard filled with flowers--my daughters could have named half of them, Pam all of them, but I could only name the asters, dayflowers, elderberry, and foxglove. Oh, and the rhododendron. There was plenty of that. Beyond the tangle, on a blue-tiled walk that presumably connected with the main courtyard, stalked a sharp-eyed heron. It looked both thoughtful and grim, but I never saw a one on the ground that didn't look like a Puritan elder considering which witch to burn next.

  In the center of the room was the woman Ilse and I had seen on the day we tried exploring Duma Key Road. Then she'd been in a wheelchair, her feet clad in blue Hi-Tops. Today she was standing with her hands planted on the grips of a walker, and her feet--large and very pale--were bare. She was dressed in a high-waisted pair of beige slacks and a dark brown silk blouse with amusingly wide shoulders and full sleeves. It was an outfit that made me think of Katharine Hepburn in those old movies they sometimes show on Turner Classic Movies: Adam's Rib, or Woman of the Year. Only I couldn't remember Katharine Hepburn looking this old, even when she was old.