Deadly Pursuit

2

The island bloomed like a second sunrise on the horizon, and Steve Gardner smiled.

Still looks the same, he thought with a rush of nostalgic yearning. Unspoiled Perfect.

He turned to Kirstie, standing beside him on the motel balcony, her face colored by the pink blush of morning. Her blond hair, recently permed, was losing its curls in a fresh easterly breeze. The flaps of her blouse collar beat like wings against her smooth, tanned throat.

“That’s it.” Steve pointed. “Pelican Key.”

She caught his excitement and reflected it in her smile. “Looks beautiful. Like paradise.”

Padding at their feet, Anastasia let out a soft whine. Steve scratched the borzoi’s angular snout.

“That’s how I always thought of it,” he said softly. “Paradise. The kind of place that never changes. The rest of the world can go downhill, straight to hell-but there’ll always be Pelican Key, pristine and uncorrupted.”

“I don’t think there’s too much corruption in Danbury.”

She made an effort at levity, but he caught the familiar undertone of irritation in her voice.

“No,” he said briskly. “Of course not.”

Conversation ended then, leaving a silence between them. There had been too many silences in recent months.

My fault, Steve told himself. Always is, right? My fault-and my guilt.

The thought was a clinging cobweb. He brushed it away.

He knew he couldn’t make his wife see what the island meant to him. Whenever he tried, the words came out sounding like a criticism of their home, their marriage, all the pieces of the life they’d built together. Better, safer, to say nothing at all.

Back inside the room, he repacked his razor, toothbrush, comb, and the few other items he’d used that morning, then methodically checked the nightstand and bureau drawers, though he knew neither he nor Kirstie had even opened them. They had spent less than ten hours in the motel, just enough time to grab some desperately needed sleep after the thirty-six-hour drive from Danbury, Connecticut, to Upper Matecumbe Key.

Kirstie used the john, and Steve did the same, and Anastasia barked and they both silenced her, fearful of disturbing the neighbors at this early hour, and finally they were ready to check out.

Trundling and lugging suitcases, they made their way down to their Grand Am and loaded the trunk. Steve wandered over to the office and paid the bill. The off-season rate was pleasingly low.

Not that the place was likely to win four diamonds in the AAA guidebook anytime soon. There were better motels on the key, but two people who meant to keep a Russian wolfhound in the room with them could hardly insist on elegance.

On his way back to the car, Steve took a short detour to look at the saltwater swimming pool-shallow now, at low tide-and beyond it, the tiny square of pitiful manmade beach that was the establishment’s pride. Sand beaches were rare in the Keys. The coral reef that paralleled the chain of islands on their seaward side, all the way from Key Largo to Key West, stopped the wave action that normally deposited drifts of sand on coastal platforms. For the most part the shoreline consisted of coral and limestone ledges, mangrove forest, and mud flats.

He had no real interest in the pool or the trucked-in sand, of course. What he wanted was one more sight of Pelican Key. Shielding his face to cut the glare on his eyeglasses, he stared out to sea.

There it was-a faint green line on the blue waters, tremulous as a daydream, elusive as hope.

He and Kirstie ate breakfast at a fast-food place, buying an extra sausage-and-egg sandwich for Anastasia to consume in the car. After that, a trip to a local market, where they stocked up on groceries and other supplies.

He paid for the items and wheeled the cart outside. Kirstie was waiting for him near a pair of vending machines, a newspaper in her hand. “Got you a Miami Herald.”

Steve’s heart constricted with a brief squeeze of fear. “I don’t want it.”

“You always read the paper. Two or three of them a day, lately.”

“Not today. Not on this trip. We’re on vacation, remember?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“We’re taking a break from… from the world.”

A frown briefly clouded her face. Then she shrugged. “Well, okay. But since I already bought this one, we might as well take it with us.” She placed it in the cart. “I can do the crossword-”

“I said, I don’t want the goddamn thing.” He grabbed the paper and wedged it roughly in the mouth of a trash can.

She stared at him, eyes narrowed, then turned and walked quickly through the parking lot, toward Anastasia yelping in the car. The cart wheels squeaked as he followed.

Hell. He shouldn’t have done that. But he had to establish the trip’s ground rules sometime. For the next two weeks, no newspapers, no TV, no radio. No contact with anything outside Pelican Key.

The island was his haven. He meant to keep it secure.

At eight o’clock, precisely on schedule, the Grand Am eased to a stop outside the gated entrance to a marina in Islamorada. Steve leaned out the window, and the security guard swung down from his seat in the guardhouse.

“We’re here to meet a captain named Pice,” Steve said.

The guard grinned. “Going to Pelican Key, are you?”

“That’s right.”

“Bring mosquito spray?”

“Sure did.”

“You’ll be okay, then.” The guard thumbed the button to lift the gate. “Captain Pice is on his boat-that’s the Black Caesar, a thirty-foot sportfisher moored in Basin C.”

“Mosquitoes,” Kirstie said flatly as Steve drove through. “I don’t recall any mention of that particular selling point in the brochure.”

Steve forced a smile. “They won’t bother you as long as you make them keep their distance.”

“How do you do that?”

“Beats me.”

The joke registered. She rewarded him with a brief softening of her features.

They found Pice on the deck of the Black Caesar, fussing with the contents of a stowage cabinet. He greeted them in a booming voice like a cannon shot.

“You must be the Gardners. Right on time, too.”

Steve shook the captain’s hand. Creased and leathery, like a well-worn glove.

Somehow Pice managed to compress his entire biography into a few introductory sentences as he walked back to the car with them to help unload their supplies. His full name was Chester Edmund Pice, and he’d lived in the Keys all his life, thereby qualifying as a bona fide Conch. His boat, as they had surely observed, was the Black Caesar, so christened in honor of a half-historical, half-legendary buccaneering companion of Blackbeard.

“But old Caesar, now, not only his beard was black,” Pice explained with a lion cough of laughter. “He was black, every bit as black as yours truly. He made piracy an equal-opportunity profession.”

Pice himself, he assured them, had never run the Jolly Roger up his mast. For more than forty years he’d fished the Florida Straits, before deciding to give the fish a break and himself a rest. Semi-retired now at sixty-five, he’d made an arrangement with the Larson family to ferry vacationers to and from Pelican Key.

“I’ll get you there,” he promised cheerfully while helping the Gardners load their luggage and groceries aboard his boat. “And I’ll be back to pick you up in two weeks.”

Steve handed him a small traveling case of Kirstie’s. “There’s supposed to be a motorboat at the island for everyday use.”

“Sure is. Little wooden-hulled job with an Evinrude outboard. Nothing fancy, but she’ll get you back and forth to town. You won’t use her much, though. You won’t care to leave Pelican Key. It casts a spell on you. Half a month there, in blessed isolation-why, it’s as good as a miracle cure.”

He hefted their heaviest suitcase without strain and went on speaking as if he were empty-handed.

“Believe me, I know. I see them all the time-people like you. They show up worn out and frazzled and cranky, with the world’s weight bearing them down, and when I retrieve ’em a couple weeks later, they’re like members of a whole new species.”

Kirstie was amused. “We’re not usually quite so worn out. It’s just that we’re a little tired after the drive-”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that you look frazzled, ma’am,” Pice said hastily, worried that he’d given offense. “You’re a vision of loveliness and youth.” He winked at her. “But your hubby, now, he could use a rest.”

Kirstie nodded, meeting Steve’s eyes. “Definitely.”

Steve could hardly dispute the point. “That’s why I’m here,” he said mildly. “And I know I picked the right place, because I used to visit Pelican Key fairly regularly.”

Pice put down the suitcase on the gangplank and studied him with a squinty pirate’s eye. “Did you, now? Paying a call on Mr. Larson?”

“No, this was seventeen years ago or more. Back when I was in high school. Before Mr. Larson lived there.”

“Before…? Son, in those days Pelican Key was uninhabited.”

“I know it.”

“So who exactly were you visiting?”

“Nobody.”

“You’ll have to explain that.”

“My best friend’s dad had a boat docked up north. Every summer the three of us would cruise south to Islamorada. Then my friend’s dad would canvass the local bars, while the two of us boys rented a dinghy with an outboard motor and went exploring. Somehow we always ended up at Pelican Key. Probably we weren’t supposed to be there; Larson owned it even then, of course, though he hadn’t started the restoration work yet. Anyway, nobody ever stopped us.”

“What did two boys encounter on Pelican Key that was so fascinating?”

“Everything. The old plantation house, the reef, the boardwalk through the mangrove swamp… Is the boardwalk still there?”

“Fully repaired, and good as new.”

“Glad to hear it. It’s important to me-the whole island, I mean. We had some great times on Pelican Key.” Steve felt wistful sadness welling in him. “Some great times.”

“Now he’s bent on recapturing his lost youth,” Kirstie said, aiming for a tone of playful banter, but just missing.

Steve felt a flush of embarrassment. “That’s not it. Or not… not exactly.”

“Then what, exactly?” she pressed. “What are you really trying to find?”

“Nothing. I mean… Pelican Key is a special place, that’s all. I wanted to see it again.” His answer sounded lame even to him.

Pice cut in with a diplomat’s poise. “This friend of yours-what was his name, anyhow? Maybe I knew him.”

“I doubt it. He was a kid like me.”

“His pappy, then. You said he liked to hoist a glass. I’ve been known to frequent the local groggeries myself on rare occasions.”

“Albert Dance was his name. His son was Jack.”

“No, doesn’t ring a bell. Unusual name, Dance. I’m sure I’d remember it. Was this the marina where you tied up?”

“As a matter of fact, it was.”

“There might be some folks here who’d know you.”

“I imagine so. Mickey Cotter, for one. He was a security guard at the time.”

“And he still is. He’s an old man now-older than me, if you young folks can imagine such a thing-but he keeps on working. Mans the guardhouse from midnight to seven.”

Steve was pleased to hear that. “Well, if you see him, let him know that Steve Gardner is here for a visit. He might not recall the name, but he’ll remember Mr. Dance’s boat. Twenty-five-foot flybridge cruiser called the Light Fantastic. Mickey has a memory for boats.”

“That he does.” Pice smiled. “You know, it’s comical. Here I’ve been sounding off about Pelican Key like you’re a pair of ordinary tourists, and you know the island better than I do.”

“Steve knows it,” Kirstie said. “I don’t. I’ve never even been to Florida before.”

Pice picked up the suitcase again. “Well, you beautify the landscape, ma’am. Believe me, you do.”

He boarded the boat, lugging the suitcase and whistling.

“What do you think?” Steve asked Kirstie once Pice was out of earshot.

She smiled. “I think he is Black Caesar, reincarnated. All he’s missing is a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder.”

“You never know. He just might have that parrot around someplace.” He took her hand. “Our captain is right about one thing. You do beautify the landscape.”

“Oh, stop,” she whispered, turning away.

The trip got under way a few minutes later. Anastasia stretched out in the cockpit. Pice took the helm seat on the flying bridge, and Kirstie settled into the bench behind him. Steve remained on the dock long enough to cast off the bow and stern lines, then jumped aboard.

Pice started the twin diesel engines, engaged the astern gears with a double clunk, and carefully throttled back, easing the boat out of its berth. When the bow was clear of the dock, he swung toward the channel, shifted to the ahead gears, and nursed the paired throttle levers forward. The Black Caesar chugged into the entrance channel at a cautious speed.

Steve climbed the ladder to the flying bridge and sat down beside Kirstie.

“Seasick yet?” he inquired.

She showed him her tongue. “Does it look green?”

“No more than usual.”

They passed between the buoys marking the harbor entrance. Pice headed southwest, past Shell Key, then motored under a bridge festooned with fishing lines into Hawk Channel, the waterway between the Keys and the reef.

They were running east now, toward the sun. Pelican Key was ahead somewhere in the brassy glare.

Steve was too fidgety to stay seated. He rose, bracing himself against a stainless-steel safety rail, and drew deep breaths of the briny sea air, swallowing it like food.

From this vantage point he could look down unobtrusively over Pice’s shoulder and read the tachometers and oil-pressure gauges on the control console. He watched the tach needles climb to 2,000 rpm as Pice opened the port and starboard throttles a little wider. A light spray misted the windshield; the wipers beat briefly to clean it.

Ahead, a boiling cloud of gulls flocked over a fishing boat as it steamed toward the Gulf Stream beyond the reef. To the south lay Indian Key; at their backs, Upper Matecumbe. Both receded, leaving Pelican Key to its-how had Pice put it-its “blessed isolation.”

That isolation was perhaps part of the reason why the place had never been developed into a resort hotel complex or a tournament golf course. Route 1, the elevated highway that played connect-the-dots with most of the islands, had missed Pelican Key by three miles. Henry Flagler’s railroad, built years earlier and demolished in the hurricane of ’35, had come no closer. No bridge or causeway linked Upper Matecumbe to Pelican Key. The only access to it was by boat, helicopter, or seaplane.

Nobody had ever much desired to go there anyway. Compared with most other local islands, Pelican Key was small-only three-quarters of a mile long and a quarter-mile wide-and a good part of its hundred and twenty acres was taken up by mangrove swamp. Hardly a developer’s dream.

A lime plantation operated on Pelican Key during the early years of this century; the Depression shut it down. After that, the island remained unwanted until Donald Larson bought it in 1946. Larson was a young man who’d already made a great deal of money in aviation and was destined to make much more. His dream was to restore the plantation house, a victim of time and storms, and retire to it someday.

Someday didn’t come until 1980, when Larson, no longer young, finally began the renovations planned decades earlier. In the interim he’d fought a fierce, protracted battle with the state government, which had wanted to purchase Pelican Key and preserve it as a park.

Larson held on to the property and forestalled an eminent-domain ruling only by guaranteeing that no further development would be attempted there, either in his lifetime or afterward. The house and other features already present would be repaired, modernized, and maintained; otherwise, Pelican Key would remain as the coral polyps and red mangrove had made it.

He was true to his word. And from 1981 onward he lived in the big limestone house on the island’s south end, enjoying, no doubt, his blessed isolation.

When he died two years ago, in 1992, his heirs faced the dilemma of what to do with Pelican Key. A considerable tax write-off could be realized by donating it to the state of Florida. But some residue of the elder Larson’s stubborn pride and sentimental attachment to the island had prevented such a move.

Instead the estate continued to maintain the house and pay the property taxes, offsetting part of the costs by renting out Pelican Key to vacationers as a private retreat, on a monthly basis in season, with biweekly deals available during the hot, wet summer months.

Steve had found out about the vacation rentals in March. The need to return to the island had been driving him like a quiet frenzy ever since.

“I see it,” Kirstie said suddenly, leaning forward.

Steve craned his neck, following her gaze, and picked out a smear of tropical verdure against the blinding sun.

Close now. Unexpectedly close, appearing out of the dazzle like a vision in a dream.

Down in the cockpit, Anastasia barked, as if in confirmation of the sighting.

“There’s the house.” Pice pointed. “See the windows shining like coins?”

Steve nodded eagerly. “Yes. I see.” A broad tile roof was visible now, partly screened by branches. “Larson must have gone all out on the restoration. The place was a ruin when Jack and I used to come here.”

“Could you go inside?” Kirstie asked.

“Oh, sure. Found a dead coral snake in a bathtub once. Must have crawled in there for some reason and died.”

Her nose wrinkled prettily. “Remind me not to bathe for the next two weeks.”

“Don’t worry. It’s a big bathtub. Plenty of room for you and a snake.”

The rap of her knuckles on his arm was meant to be playful, but hurt anyway.

The Black Caesar motored closer. Pice glanced back at them with a grin. “What do you say we circle her once, just to say hello?”

He was already steering the boat northeast. The mangrove fringe on the island’s western side blurred past-dense clumps of twisted trees, foreboding and mysterious, the eldritch landscape of another world.

At the north end, there was a small cove, a semicircle of shallow water, mirror-lustrous, bordered by mangroves and stands of hardwood trees.

“That’s where we used to beach the dinghy,” Steve said, remembering. “There’s a Calusa Indian midden not far inland-you know, a shell mound. The salt ponds are nearby, too.”

Kirstie studied him. “How much time did you and Jack spend here, anyway?”

“Oh, about four days a summer, three summers in all. Maybe twelve days, total.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like much, does it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve had love affairs that were briefer.”

“None recently, I hope.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

They were cruising along the seaward side now, past a narrow beach composed of broken bits of coral, pebbly and coarse, over a solid coral foundation. Palms and the imported Australian pines called casuarinas fringed the beach, swaying gently as if to unheard music.

Near the southern tip of the key, the motorboat Pice had promised came into view, bobbing in the shallows. It was moored to a small dock at the end of a pathway twisting down from the house between landscaped beds of poinsettias and yellow jasmine.

The dock was new to Steve. It hadn’t been there when he and Jack explored the key. Neither had the path, for that matter, nor the flower beds. A lot had changed. But the important things had remained untouched, unsullied-a small but precious part of his life that had never been tainted.

The boat glided toward the dock. Anastasia was barking again. Pelican Key waited, silent and calm.

Abruptly, Kirstie turned to him, her face almost solemn. “Steve. I

… I hope this works out for you. For both of us.”

“What does?”

“The trip. The time we spend here. I hope you find… whatever it is you’re looking for.”

The words touched him in a tender place. He reached out, stroked her hair, soft and golden, and she did not pull away.

“I don’t need anything more than what I have right now,” he whispered.

It was the right thing to say. But he no longer knew if it was true-or if it could be true for him, ever again.