A Garden of Vipers

CHAPTER 37

At six-fifty-nine, Clair Peltier’s little red Beamer crunched across the sand and shells of my drive. For a moment I thought I’d forgotten to brush my teeth, recalled I’d brushed them twice this hour. I finger-combed hair from my eyes.

I heard Clair walk up my dozen wooden steps, pause on the stoop. When I opened the door, Clair’s knock was still gathering in her hand. I bowed flamboyantly and gestured her inside. She took a tentative step, then crossed my threshold. Clair wore a simple lavender blouse, a slender silver necklace across her flawless skin. She had on shorts, white, mid-thigh. I’d rarely seen her when she wasn’t wearing slacks, or dresses with mid-calf hemlines. I glanced down, smiled up.

“My gosh, Clair, you’ve got legs.”

“I, uh…thank you, Ryder.”

She passed by, studying my decor of shells and driftwood and pieces of art I’d scrimped to acquire, bright and whimsical pieces of folk art. I felt dizzy, like the air around her was suffused with a gentle intoxicant.

“Can I get a you a drink, Clair?”

“Wine available?”

“If you wish. Or I can mix up something with more…” I almost said sexiness, changed it to sizzle.

“Such as?”

“I worked as a bartender in college, at least when I felt like working. You ever had a Caribbean Lover?”

She touched a forefinger to her chin, batted her dark eyelashes, did Scarlett O’Hara.

“Mista Rydah, now that’s puh-sonal.”

“Rum, pineapple juice, O.J., amaretto…Whoops, I don’t have any amaretto. No Caribbean Lover. How about a zombie or a mai tai?”

She thought a moment, her lips pursed tight as a fresh rose. “I’ve tried them. Give me something I’ve never tasted before.”

I opened the cabinet, removed several little-used bottles and a cocktail shaker. I dug around in the fridge. Clair went back to gazing at my art while I measured and mixed. Two minutes later I handed her my concoction and poured one for myself.

“My take on Barbados Punch,” I said. “Triple sec, lime, pineapple, dark rum, and a pinch of cinnamon and clove.”

She took a sip, tasted her lips with her tongue, a flicker of pink. She winked her approval.

We walked to the deck doors, stepped outside. The water was aquamarine, turning deep blue a half mile out. Gulls screeched and tumbled in the air. A blue heron eyed us warily from a seagrass-covered dune in my front yard. The white Bertram I’d been seeing lately idled past, just outside the second bar. Clair walked to the railing and looked seaward. The breeze played in her hair.

“It’s an incredible place, Ryder.”

“When my mother passed away she left me four hundred and eight thousand dollars. I had every intention of buying a twenty-thousand-dollar trailer out in the country, living off the interest of the remaining money.”

She turned. “I can see you doing that. I can’t see you being happy for long. What changed your mind?”

I tumbled backward in time, to one of the most haunting moments of my life. For a moment I was frozen in the memory.

“It might sound strange, Clair.” I tried to put a laugh in my voice, but it came out raspy.

“Try me.”

I turned and pointed to the surf.

“One night I drove to Dauphin Island to go fishing. I was out there in the water, waves at my waist, a sky full of stars. The moon was full. It made a white line on the water that reached to the horizon. All of a sudden everything seemed to stop moving. I felt I could step onto the moonlight and walk to the horizon, gather the sky in my arms like silk. I could feel everything, Clair: sky, stars. Even the moonlight on my skin. It was the most peaceful moment I’d ever known, and I wanted to stay in that moment forever, never leave the water.”

I expected an amused smile. Clair’s eyes balanced wonder with approval.

“One more thing, Clair,” I added. “When I headed back to my car, I passed this house, saw a FOR SALE sign. Guess what it cost?”

“Four hundred and eight thousand dollars, of course.”

“Do you think it was coincidence? Synchronicity? Fate?”

She moved beside me, her shoulder pressing my arm.

“You had a moment of light, Carson.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s beyond words: Moments that can’t be described, only felt. We don’t have the language or system of reference for any form of description. The world works in ways we find mysterious, forbidding. But only because we can’t see beneath the surface. We sense shapes moving down there, feel ripples as they glide past. It’s logical and orderly. But we can’t explain why, or what powers it all, since…”

“It’s outside our frame of reference,” I finished. For a moment we looked into each other’s eyes. She swallowed and looked away and changed the subject.

“Have you told your ex-girlfriend to watch out for the Kincannons?”

“Not yet. I want to study them first. Closely.”

“Don’t take long. They’re like quicksand. She could get sucked into something she doesn’t understand.”

“Ms. Danbury looks for things she doesn’t understand and throws herself into them. It’s what made her a good investigative reporter. If I’m going to tell her to stay away from her new boyfriend, I’m going to have to explain why.”

Clair spun the cocktail glass in her fingers for a few seconds, stared at the action, mulling over a thought.

“I always wondered why you never introduced Ms. Danbury to me.”

“I always meant to, Clair. I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

She studied the glass again. Set it on the railing. “It bothered me that you didn’t introduce us. A lot, to tell the truth.”

“Why?”

Something shimmered in her eyes. The breeze slipped through her hair as she stared toward the horizon.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “Nonsensical.”

“Tell me, Clair.”

She turned to me. I realized her eyes weren’t blue. They were beyond anything that simple.

“I felt left out,” she said.

“Left out?”

“I said it was stupid. It’s just that…we’ve been through some strange events together, Carson. Two years ago, when my life was falling apart, you were there. If we hadn’t talked in my garden on that terrible day, I would never have faced my vanity and insecurities, the forces that had moved me for years. I might still be trapped in that life.”

“It had nothing to do with me, Clair. It was you that stood up to-”

She put her finger against my lips. “I could have retreated into the known and the safe. Instead, I jumped across the divide to a new world. I only jumped because you expected me to, Carson. I jumped because you believed I had the strength. I’m here now, safe on another shore, because of you. There was a reason you were in the garden that day.”

“There’s a reason we both were.”

She started to respond, but I saw her mouth falter, not finding the language, the point of reference. Her lips were exotic petals drifting in water. My hands started to rise to her form.

And like Clair’s lips, my arms faltered, drifted back to my sides. I turned my eyes from her face, mumbled, “Can I get you another drink?”

“No thank you,” she said, her eyes turning away. “I didn’t realize I was so bushed by the week. I think I’d better go.”

“Of course,” I said. “We’ve both had some long days.”

“We can finish our talk later. Maybe get together for dinner next week. A nice seafood place.”

“That’d be good.”

I followed her inside. She picked up her purse, slung it over her shoulder, went to the door. I remained in the center of the room, hearing a roaring, like the waves had advanced fifty yards and were breaking against the pilings of my home.

Clair turned. Her eyes took a moment to rise to mine.

“Good-bye, Carson,” she said. “Take care.”

“Later,” I said.

The rains gathered in the west on Sunday, what one forecaster called “the last blast of spring,” set to roll through. I saw the system on the weather radar, lines of storm cells rolling in from south Texas and Mexico like ragged green ghosts. I lay in bed most of the day, half-heartedly poring over Rudolnick’s pages. Harry called at six; he’d been doing the same.

“I finished my look-see on Rudolnick’s case histories. No more pages tucked into magazines. Nothing more on the guy that scared him. Nothing on Harwood.”

“I got about a quarter of a box of Rudolnick’s files left over here, Harry. You’re free to read through them.”

Harry grunted.

“How about you finish them up and I’ll drop by later to get ’em back into safekeeping. If I never read another psychiatric case history it’ll be too soon.”

I glanced out the window: chop in the waves from the wind, but little more than scudding cumulus above. Larger pleasure boats were out; the big white Bertram was rolling slowly a quarter mile out. I wondered if it was a charter. Tourists loved dolphin cruises. My body felt the need for a tour across the water, but via kayak.

First though, there was my homework. I sighed, unboxed the last of Rudolnick’s files, set them on my table. Pressed my palms against my temples and read.

Harry arrived close to eight, brushing mist from his hair. I’d finished my Rudolnick files and found nothing else exciting. I had just changed into swim trunks. The rough weather was predicted to last several days and I wanted to get a last run in before the storm arrived.

Harry looked at my swim gear.

“You just got in, I hope.”

“Heading out. I need it.”

“Carson…”

The local cutaway popped on the tube and I made a final check of the Doppler, studying the direction of the clouds on the time-lapse replay.

“I’ve got to get out there for a bit, Harry, clear my head.”

“Look at the damn clouds, Carson. They’re a wall.”

I looked through the deck doors to the horizon. It looked like war being waged between earth and sky, vertical mountains of indigo smoke lit by jitters of internal lightning. I’d be cutting it close, but I needed the water and the exertion.

“They’re moving almost parallel to the shore right now, Harry, trouble for Florida, not for me, at least not for another hour. I’ll be back and on my second beer by then.”

Harry shook his head. He would have made a good Daniel Boone, a lousy Thor Heyerdahl.

“I’ll have a scotch here, keep an eye out. When you get back I’ll take the files to storage.”

“I’ll be fine, bro,” I assured him. “Go home and play some tunes, blow out the jets.”

A murmur of thunder blew in with the wind. Harry grunted, picked up the files, and headed for the door.

I fought hard past the breakers, putting burn in my shoulders, a rasp in my breathing. Salt stung my eyes. Flying fish jumped my boat. A half mile out, I stopped paddling and stretched my back.

The breeze shifted direction, carrying the scent of rain and ozone, and I knew it was time for that beer. Twilight had almost deepened into night, and I spun to the pinpoint light of my deck. After a dozen strokes I became aware of a light at my back, behind it the burr of a wide-open motor.

I saw a bow bouncing. Bearing down on me.

I cut at a right angle, but the craft angled my way. I waved the paddle above my head like a pennant, idiotically yelling, “Stop!”

I dove overboard and pulled hard toward bottom. The thud of the boat hitting my kayak reverberated through the water. The engine slowed as the craft spun in a tight circle. I surfaced, stroked to the side of a thirty-foot Bertram.

Light struck me, a circle of white. I looked into its brilliance and turned away. A rope ladder tumbled over the side. I pulled myself up the ladder, light blazing in my eyes, the boat rocking in the waves.

“Easy with that light,” I said, climbing into the craft. “It’s blinding me.”

“I was afraid we were going to miss you,” said a voice from the helm.

“Miss finding me in the water?”

“Miss hitting you just right. I haven’t driven a boat in a while.”

I froze and looked into the face of the man at the helm. A videotape honed into resolution: Crandell. He was grinning.

“Howdy, Carson,” said a voice beside me, strangely familiar. I turned.

Tyree Shuttles.

I spun to dive from the boat, but an arm encircled my neck and threw me to the deck. Something burned hot in my bicep and my mind turned to water and washed me down a hole in the deck.

Crandell’s grin followed, like the Cheshire cat tumbling through the dark.

Jack Kerley

A Garden of Vipers