Nick thought: That explains Smoke’s mysterious transformation. It was Mrs. Starch who created the new Duane Scrod Jr.
“And by the way,” she added, “you’re right: the young man is completely innocent of that arson. Now please don’t interrupt me again.”
Her tone was one that Nick and Marta remembered all too well from class. They fell silent and listened.
“It might seem strange that Duane and I are part of the same ‘team,’ ” said Mrs. Starch, “but we’ve got more in common than you think.”
Nick couldn’t imagine what that could be.
“For one thing, we both love the wilderness,” she went on. “Duane is happiest when he’s out fishing or camping, or scouting for bears and deer. My own interest is endangered wildlife, as you surely figured out after sneaking into my house. Each of those mounted birds and reptiles and mammals that you saw was killed on the highway or in a storm, or shot.”
“The young panther, too?” Nick asked.
“Sadly, yes. Struck by a car on the Tamiami Trail. I saw the body one afternoon while driving home from Miami, and I brought it to a taxidermist here in town, an old friend.”
With her usual bluntness, Marta said, “There’s more dead animals in your house than I ever saw before, except in a museum.”
Mrs. Starch explained that she’d had the mounts made because she believed she would never get a glimpse of those species free in the wild: “Tragically, there are too few left.” She went to check on the panther cub and returned with a bag of trail mix.
Nick and Marta weren’t hungry; they were too caught up in her story.
Munching away, Mrs. Starch continued: “Here’s something else that Duane and I share: we both know what it’s like to be abandoned. ‘Dumped,’ in the current jargon. One day, Duane’s mother just lit out for France without even telling him. My husband did the same thing—not to Paris, but to Plano, Texas, which is more his speed. I don’t know why he walked out on me, but it hurt. Still does.”
Marta squirmed, which meant she’d thought of something else to ask. Nick knew what was coming.
“There’s a rumor that something bad happened to Mr. Starch,” Marta said. “That he’s, like, dead and stuffed like a moose.”
“It would be better than he deserves,” Mrs. Starch remarked dryly. “No, Stanley Starch is very much alive and kicking. Every April I get a birthday card telling me about his latest girlfriend. Is there any other ugly gossip I should know about?”
“Snakes—they say you keep poisonous snakes in your basement, rattlers and moccasins and copperheads.” Marta was on a roll, and Nick couldn’t do anything about it.
“Also untrue,” Mrs. Starch said. “For a while I was lucky enough to have a pair of eastern indigo snakes, which were rescued from a construction site by one of my students. The indigo is absolutely gorgeous, totally harmless, and nearly extinct. I released mine far out in the Fakahatchee, where I hope they found true snake love and made lots of babies. Anything else?”
“No,” said Nick quickly.
“Yes,” said Marta. “That.” She touched a finger to her chin.
“Ah. The scar.” Far from annoyed, Mrs. Starch seemed amused by Marta’s boldness.
Apologetically, Nick said, “It’s none of our business.”
“That’s right, but I’ll tell you anyway,” Mrs. Starch said. “It happened when I was about your age. An osprey chick fell out of its nest, and being young and fearless, I decided to climb all the way up and put the little fella back with his brother and sister. The nest was high on a utility pole and the wind was howling, but somehow I made it to the top.”
Marta asked, “So what happened—did the birds bite your face or something?”
“Heavens, no! They were timid as they could be. Halfway down the pole, one of my sandals slipped off the pegs and I dropped about twenty feet—I believe the term is ‘ face-plant’—onto a glass soda bottle that a litterbug had tossed by the side of the road.” Mrs. Starch tapped her scar. “Some people say it’s the shape of an anvil, some say an hourglass. But no, Marta, it’s not the mark of the devil. It’s the mark of the Pepsi-Cola company.”
“How many stitches?”
“Foolishly, I refused to go to the hospital. Thus the unsightly result.” Mrs. Starch stretched her arms. She said she was tired and needed a nap. “Wait here for Mr. Spree. He’ll drive you back to town. And remember, you’re both sworn to secrecy.”
“You haven’t gone home since the fire?” Nick asked.
“No, I’ve stayed right here, day and night. Mr. Spree has been good enough to run all my errands, beginning with the return of Libby’s asthma medicine. He even got the tires rotated on my car.”
Marta sat upright. “Listen!”
It was the faraway whine of a high-pitched engine, gears shifting.
Mrs. Starch looked anything but worried. “A friendly,” she said. “One of us.”
“Is it Duane?” Nick asked.
“Correct.”
“Here’s what I don’t understand: How did you get him to help? That day he bit your pencil in half—he was seriously ticked off about the pimple paper,” Nick said.
“Oh, I never asked Duane to get involved in this project. Wouldn’t have dreamed of it!” Mrs. Starch asserted. “Believe me, that boy was número uno on my list of trouble-makers. It was Mr. Spree who recruited him. They knew each other from a past adventure.”
Marta said, “That figures.”
“Yes, it’s a small world. Imagine my shock when Duane strolled into camp one morning.”
Imagine his shock, thought Nick.
The motorcycle, much closer and noisier than before, suddenly spluttered to a stop. “He’ll hide the bike in the woods and hike in from the south,” Mrs. Starch explained. “Usually takes him another half hour or so.”
Nick’s head was pounding as he struggled to absorb everything the teacher had told them. “But how did Twilly meet Duane?” he asked. “What kind of adventure are you talking about?”
“That I cannot answer. Speak to Mr. Spree.” Mrs. Starch yawned and said, “Marta, may I have a word with Nick privately in my tent?”
Marta looked around dubiously. “What’m I supposed to do out here all by myself?”
“Listen to the birds.”
Nick got down and followed Mrs. Starch into the tent. Crawling wasn’t easy with his right arm bound; he hopped like a three-legged dog. He managed to fit himself cross-legged on the ground beside her sleeping bag. Ar ranged neatly on a square of cardboard were a few basic items: flashlight, toothbrush, mouthwash, hairbrush, a bottle of aspirin, a bar of soap, and some note-sized lavender envelopes. There was also a small manual typewriter. Nick felt uneasy in her personal space.
“Here.” She handed him the straw hat, which he held in the crook of his left arm.
The kitten was dozing in the shape of a fuzzy, plump comma. Its padded paws covered its face, muffling a muscular snore.
Mrs. Starch dropped her voice. “Nick, do you want to be part of this—and help your friend Duane at the same time?”
Nick couldn’t take his eyes off the cat. It was astonishing to think that he was holding one of the last panthers on earth.
“Are you in, or out?” Mrs. Starch asked.
“In.”
“You must be certain.”
“I am.”
“Excellent.” She took the hat with the kitten and positioned it carefully on the soft flannel flap of her sleeping bag. “Nick, I’m going to ask you to do something.”
“Sure.”
“Take off that sling.”
He was caught by surprise. “How come?”
Mrs. Starch said, “I know why you’re wearing it—Duane told us what happened to your father, and I admire your devotion. But here’s the present situation in the Black Vine Swamp: for what lies ahead, each of us will require a strong heart and two good arms. We need one hundred percent of you.”
Nick hesitated.
“
Your dad would understand,” she said.
He removed his shirt and she helped unwrap the Ace bandage from his shoulder and armpit. Once his right arm was unbound, he flexed his elbow and made a fist with his hand to get the circulation flowing.
“What if Twilly can’t find the mother panther?” he asked Mrs. Starch. “Or what if she won’t take back her cub?”
“Hope springs eternal, Nick.”
Again they heard an engine in the distance. Mrs. Starch frowned, tilting an ear toward the sound.
“That’s not a motorcycle,” she said. “That’s a helicopter.”
“Friendly?”
“I seriously doubt it.”
TWENTY-ONE
Jimmy Lee Bayliss held the gun across his lap, which made the chopper pilot nervous.
“Relax. I know what I’m doin’,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said, which wasn’t altogether true.
He’d never been a very good shot. Any target, moving or nonmoving, presented a challenge. His buddies back in Texas invited him along on hunting trips mostly out of pity.
The deer rifle in his hands had never killed a deer, or even come close, though it had frightened many. That’s all Jimmy Lee Bayliss aimed to do if he came across the trespassers who were hassling Melton and messing with Red Diamond’s gear—scare ’em off by firing a couple of rounds over their sneaky heads.
Same as he’d done to that panther.
The pilot said, “You got the safety on, right?”
“Gimme a break.” Jimmy Lee Bayliss peeked at the safety button above the trigger. He was relieved to see that it was, in fact, on.
“Got any Tums?” he asked the pilot.
“No, I don’t.”
“Rolaids?”
“Sorry.”
“Maalox?”
“Do you want me to set her down so you can make a potty stop?”
“Naw.”
Jimmy Lee Bayliss wondered if his boss was feeling better. The nurses had been taping Drake McBride’s ribs when Jimmy Lee Bayliss had left him at the hospital, cussing and whining and making a nuisance of himself.
The pilot said, “How low do you want to go?”
“Two hundred feet, give or take.”
They circled Section 21 for fifteen minutes and saw no life on the ground except for a pair of wild boars. Jimmy Lee Bayliss decided to shoot at them for target practice. However, the pilot took his sweet time setting the helicopter in a hover, and the pigs trotted safely into the scrub.
“Nice work,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss grumbled.
“Where to now?”
“The usual.”
Section 22 appeared quiet, too. Jimmy Lee Bayliss ordered the pilot to take an extra-slow pass to make sure that Red Diamond’s pirate well was still invisible from the air. A person looking hard enough might have noticed ATV tracks at the off-loading site, but the natural suspects would be deer poachers, not oil drillers.
As the chopper climbed to five hundred feet and angled slowly back toward the coast, the pilot pointed out his window and said, “Hey, check it out!”
At first Jimmy Lee Bayliss couldn’t see what he was talking about. Then, as the nose of the aircraft tipped, the scene came into full view. His mouth went dry and his ears got hot.
“Hold it here!” he barked at the pilot. “Now!”
“Ten-four.”
“Why are you laughin’?”
“Because it’s funny,” the pilot said.
“Not to me, it ain’t. Not to Mr. McBride, either, the man who’s payin’ for this whirlybird!”
“Okay, fine. It’s not funny.”
“Damn right it’s not.” Jimmy Lee Bayliss was steaming mad.
All the pink flags—once laid out so precisely with the eye of a surveyor, marking the future path of the illegal pipeline from Section 22 to Section 21—had been yanked from their holes, uprooted by an unknown hand.
A criminal’s hand it was, too: some warped outlaw, some lame excuse for a comedian who had replanted them on their stems, all those little pink flags, brightening a patch of parched prairie like candles on cornbread.
Rearranged in such an obvious way that anyone flying low enough in a helicopter couldn’t help but see the double-edged insult.
“S-C-A-T,” the flags sneered in fluttering capital letters, as cheery as confetti. SCAT.
“Either he’s telling you to go away,” the pilot mused, “or he’s calling you a name.”
Or both, thought Jimmy Lee Bayliss with disgust.
Still shading a grin, the pilot said, “You want me to land so you can look around?”
“No, sir,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said gravely. “I want you to find out where I can rent me some bloodhounds.”
They heard Smoke’s motorcycle crank up and speed off.
Mrs. Starch said, “The helicopter must’ve spooked him.”
Nick peered up through the thick branches at a blue pane of sky. “Was it the sheriff?”
“I don’t believe so.”
Marta was dejectedly examining her waterlogged sneakers. “We need to go,” she said. “Is it safe yet?”
“Not without Mr. Spree.” Mrs. Starch opened the second pizza box. “Anybody care for a slice?”
Nick said, “So, what exactly is the master plan?”
Marta jerked on his right sleeve. “If I don’t get home soon, I’m gonna be grounded until I’m, like, a hundred. Hey, your arm grew back!”
“Teacher’s orders,” said Mrs. Starch, gnawing on a slice of pepperoni. “Is it Saturday or Sunday? I lose track of time out here.”
Nick told her it was Saturday. Her brow furrowed, but she continued to eat. Marta reached over and flicked a fat red ant off her pants.
“The plan,” said Mrs. Starch, “is to get that kitten back with his momma as soon as possible. The longer they’re apart, the harder it’s going to be. There will come a day, sadly, when the mother cat simply gives up and moves on.…”
“Okay, what can we do?” Nick asked.
“Number one: Stay close to Duane. Make sure he doesn’t try anything crazy.”
Marta rolled her eyes. “You mean like running from the cops? Gee, that’s not crazy at all.”
Nick said, “Mrs. Starch, nobody gets close to Smoke.”
“And what does that have to do with the panthers, anyway?” Marta asked.
Patiently, Mrs. Starch explained: “Your friend Duane has a special talent that’s crucial to this mission. There’s no chance of succeeding without him.”
Nick was intrigued. “What kind of talent?”
Exasperated, Marta said, “He’s a fugitive! If we help him, we’re breaking the law.”
But he’s also innocent, Nick thought. Another heavy decision.
“Watch after Duane, please,” Mrs. Starch urged. “If you don’t, Squirt might die out here in my arms. So watch after Duane.”
A sharp, familiar whistle rose from fifty yards away. Mrs. Starch smiled and glanced at the watch on her wrist.
Twilly Spree entered the campsite at a dead run. He was panting hard and slick with sweat.
“Let’s move!” he snapped, beckoning to Marta and Nick.
“Finally,” Marta said, and sprang to her feet.
Nick asked Twilly what was wrong.
“Just follow me, and stay quiet,” he said.
Mrs. Starch stood up. “Hold on. What happened?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
The teacher folded her arms rigidly, as if addressing a wayward pupil. “What did you do now, Mr. Spree?”
“I left ’em a message. They deserved it.”
“What sort of message?”
“The four-letter sort.”
“Oh Lord,” said Mrs. Starch. “Don’t bother sharing it, please.”
“I couldn’t resist.”
“Take these young people back to town immediately, and try not to corrupt them on the way.”
The jog to the car was tense and hurried, Twilly keeping well ahead of Nick and Marta as he bulled th
rough the hammocks and bounded across the flatlands and vaulted over the saw palmettos. Nick was glad to have both arms free to shield his face from the whippy twigs, ropy vines, and gluey spiderwebs. Marta struggled to stay close and, as instructed by Twilly, said nothing. It was an ordeal for her to remain quiet for more than a few minutes, and Nick was impressed by her self-restraint.
The Prius was barreling down the rutted farm road—Nick and Marta bouncing against their seat belts—when Twilly finally spoke.
“How much did Aunt Bunny tell you?” he asked.
“Everything except the part about how Smoke got involved,” Nick said.
“I see.”
“It would be good to know.”
“Good for whom?” said Twilly. He put on his ski beanie and black wraparound sunglasses.
Marta sat forward. “You trust us. Stop pretending that you don’t.”
“Ha!”
But a few minutes later, Twilly grudgingly opened up: “A couple of years ago, I was driving from Tallahassee to Chokoloskee, nonstop, and don’t ask why. After about seventeen cups of coffee, I pulled off the interstate to answer the call of nature.”
“Where?” Nick asked.
“Right here in Naples. Beautiful Exit 101,” Twilly said. “Four in the morning, fog thicker than clam chowder, and I’m standing there watering the weeds under some billboard when I smell smoke—and I don’t mean your friend. I mean smoke, as in fire. I look up through the mist and see flames. The billboard is definitely burning.”
“It was Duane being a pyro, right?” Marta said.
“I took off from one way and he took off from another, and we literally ran smack into each other,” Twilly recalled. “First thing out of his mouth: ‘I’m the one who did it!’ As if I hadn’t figured that out, him with his jerry can of gasoline and burned mops. I asked him why and he told me. I asked his name and he told me that, too. Then we heard the sirens and I promptly hauled butt. Duane, he stayed behind and gave himself up.”
Marta asked why Smoke hadn’t escaped while he had the chance.
Twilly said he didn’t know. “But I’ll tell you what was on that billboard he torched: a big ad for American Airlines. They were running a winter special—Miami to Paris for three hundred and ninety-five dollars.”