Deadly Pursuit

9

Wetness. Wetness on his hand.

Steve Gardner surfaced from sleep and felt a soft tongue licking his knuckles. Anastasia, whining softly.

“What is it, Ana?” he whispered. “You need to go outside?”

The dog sniffed the air and growled.

No, he realized. That’s not it. She’s worked up about something.

Apprehension slapped him fully awake. He listened to the house. Heard nothing but Kirstie’s soft, regular breathing and Ana’s warning growls.

Soundlessly he slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Kirstie. The room was a cage of stifling heat, the claustrophobic stuffiness only marginally relieved by the warm breeze through the windows. His underpants stuck to his groin and thighs in clinging patches; his torso was slick with droplets of perspiration.

He reached under the bed and withdrew a gun.

It was a 9mm Beretta 92SB pistol, which he had purchased at a gun show two years ago, after a rash of burglaries in their Danbury neighborhood. The blue-black barrel gleamed in the pale starlight.

He checked the clip to confirm that it was fully loaded. Sixteen 9mm Parabellum jacketed hollowpoints lay stacked on top of the magazine spring like sardines in a can.

Anastasia let out a louder sound, half cough, half bark. Kirstie stirred, murmured briefly in her sleep, but did not wake.

“Come on, girl,” Steve breathed.

He left the room, Anastasia padding after him.

The house seemed larger at night. It covered twenty-five hundred square feet, all on ground level; there was no cellar, no second story. The architecture was Spanish Colonial Revival: thick walls, lead-framed windows, hand-painted ceramic tile. Though much of the original decor had been ruined by the hurricane of ’35 and by years of neglect, Larson’s renovations had restored it.

Steve started with the guest bedroom, then checked out the bathroom, a nest of bright turquoise tile in floral patterns.

He proceeded down the long, tiled loggia that connected the two bedrooms and bath with the rest of the house. To his left was a wall of carved cedar, the recessed display cabinets holding terra-cotta curios. On his right, a row of French doors framed a corner of the patio and garden.

He paused at one of the doors and peered through a filigree of decorative ironwork. A blue tile fountain-two dolphins with interlocked tails-spat an arc of salt water into a star-shaped pool.

At the end of the loggia were doorways to the entrance hall and the living room. He went into the foyer first, passing under the skylight through a glittery fall of starshine.

Anastasia scooted ahead of him and sniffed at the front door. Steve tensed. Somebody outside?

Gingerly he tested the door. It felt secure, unviolated. He nudged Ana back, then unlocked the door and pushed it open.

The hammock on the front porch swung lazily in a fresh breeze. The flagstone court beyond the steps was as vacant and still as the surface of the moon. The gate was closed.

“Nobody there,” he reassured the dog as he shut and locked the door.

The living room was next. He stopped in the doorway and scanned its wide expanse. Starlight filtered through tall, arched windows, gleaming on the mahogany furnishings, the miniature schooner on the mantel, the ceramic vases squatting like trolls in the corners.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Still, a person could be concealed behind the sofa or one of the leather armchairs.

He considered flicking on the lights. Caution stopped him. Illumination would make him a better target.

In darkness he circled the room, the gun held at waist height, cocked, a pound or two of pressure on the trigger. The large antique globe creaked, spinning a few degrees, when he brushed against it.

Anastasia preceded him into the dining room. A wrought-iron chandelier hung over a long mahogany table flanked by hand-carved chairs. He found no intruders under the table or behind the floral-print curtains drawn over the French doors.

He and Ana slipped through a side doorway into the 1920s-style kitchen, replete with bottle-glass windows and inlaid wall tiles in a pelican design. A pile of crockery was soaking in the sink; along the counter scuttled a large shiny palmetto bug.

Steve crept past the antique stove toward the door at the rear. The tile floor was cold against his bare feet. Anastasia’s toenails clicked softly.

He reached for the doorknob, and there was a hand on his arm.

His heart kicked. He pivoted, the gun rising And saw Kirstie in her nightgown, drawing back with a gasp as she saw the pistol, her eyes very big.

Anastasia woofed.

“Jesus,” Steve hissed, fear receding and leaving him limp. “Never sneak up on a nervous man with a loaded gun.”

“Sorry.” Her voice was a frightened whisper. “I woke up and you weren’t there. What the hell’s going on?”

“Ana’s antsy about something. As if we’ve got company. But I haven’t found any sign of trouble.”

“Have you looked everywhere?”

“Just about. But I’d better be thorough.”

He drew a couple of shallow breaths, then opened the door and entered a small, musty chamber, a maid’s room in an earlier day. It was unfurnished save for a chair, a table, and the two-way radio. Through the walls thrummed the pulse of two diesel generators, which Steve fed with fuel oil on a daily basis; they were housed in a shed directly outside.

“Looks okay,” he told Kirstie after checking the window for signs of intrusion.

“How about the patio?”

“That’s the only place I haven’t looked.”

He returned to the dining room, Ana and Kirstie following, and opened one of the French doors, then passed through the pergola, breathing the thick, humid air. Around him lay white wicker lounge chairs, gleaming like bone in the colorless starlight.

Turning in a slow circle, he took in the rear of the house with its whitewashed facade and red-tiled roof-the low coral wall, draped with chalice vine, enclosing the patio and garden-the trellises of bougainvillea and beds of pink primrose and aster, hemmed in by stands of royal poinciana, gumbo-limbo, and woman’s tongue tree.

He checked the garden gate, which was locked, then poked around meaninglessly in the trees until he started to feel silly. “False alarm,” he said finally.

Kirstie nodded. “Must have been. Funny, though. Ana doesn’t usually get spooked in the middle of the night.”

“Well, she did, this time.” Steve petted the borzoi. “What was it, sweetie? Bad dream?”

Anastasia whined.

Kirstie had a thought. “Bet she’s still hung up over that frog she chased. It drove her crazy.”

“Sure. You’re right. That’s probably all it was.” Steve smiled, taking his wife’s hand. “A frog in the garden. Not a serpent.”

He kept his words light. But he couldn’t shake the uneasiness that had been with him since Anastasia’s lapping tongue pulled him out of sleep.

As he led Kirstie back to the patio, he found himself looking at the chain of lights that marked Upper Matecumbe Key.

Matecumbe. A corruption of mata hombre. Kill man.

The thought haunted him, and it was a long time before he finally drifted back to sleep.