Deceived

15

After an hour with the redheaded deputy, I was beginning to agree with her mother that a hash cookie or two was just what the doctor ordered for a girl whose mind never stopped working and who wanted to be everywhere at once, especially any island with a beach or high ground, even if it meant trespassing, or wading through swamp.

Birdy’s willingness to trespass had almost gotten her into trouble the previous night. She had slipped under the gate of a landfill, only a mile from the condo where she lived, and was hiking among the piles of raw earth and asphalt when a security guard in a golf cart had appeared out of nowhere.

“He was pretty good, had his lights off,” she explained. “I don’t know if he saw me or not, but I went over the back fence anyway. I’m trying to borrow a night vision unit from a friend. If he doesn’t come through, our next visit will have to wait for a night or two.”

Something else that had to wait was our trip to Cushing Key, but that was because of low tide, not our lack of equipment. When we left the dock at one, the flats resembled green meadows, the bay was so shallow, so I drove us straight through Captiva Pass and into the Gulf of Mexico.

“That’s the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen,” the redhead grinned, then asked, “What’s the name of the island?” We were running along the outside in water that was turquoise, wind-streaked. To our right floated a strand of silver beach, miles long, with coconut palms that leaned westward.

“Cayo Costa,” I told her, then explained that some locals still called it La Costa. “Years ago, Cuban fishermen kept fish ranches there-rancheros. They caught mullet but made most of their money smuggling rum.”

“Some things never change,” the off-duty deputy replied.

I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I continued to tell her about the island. “At the north end, there’s a tiny cemetery and a park where you can camp. Next time, bring a swimsuit. We’ll anchor off a patch of rocks that’s good for snorkeling-fire coral and a lot of fish to see. I’ll bring a speargun.”

“I’ve got a bra and panties,” Birdy replied. “There’s nobody around. Plus, I’m so flat-chested, who’s gonna notice?”

“Up to you,” I said, then anchored near the rocks and waited while she splashed around, using my mask and fins. I was playing tour guide, which wasn’t as interesting as fishing but fun and more relaxed, even though the redhead fired question after question at me. For the last hour, too many of her questions had been about Joel Ransler, so it was a relief to get a break while her mouth was plugged with a snorkel.

Fifteen minutes later, wearing clothes but hair still wet, she was lecturing, “It happens every time, Smithie, I swear to Christ. I’ll go months without a date, then finally meet a decent guy. Moment we start sleeping together, you can count on it, an even better-looking guy appears out of the blue. Total stranger. Would I like to go to dinner, maybe fly to Paris for the weekend? That actually happened to me, by the way.”

“How’d you like Paris?” I asked, giving it an edge.

“Didn’t go, smartass. I should’ve-I’m not dating anyone now, so see where it got me? When God needs a laugh, He hauls out His list of single women and tacks it to a dartboard. Keep your options open, Smithie, that’s all I’m saying.”

Smithie, that’s what she had decided to call me, which was okay. I had made a mistake by describing the special prosecutor as “handsome,” then mentioning the name of the movie star he favored. This was after telling her I had accepted Ransler’s job offer, but I hadn’t gotten around yet to the more unpleasant topics of Alice Candor’s behavior last night or the unsolved murder. Nor had I told her much about Marion Ford, but it was time, I decided, to set her straight.

“Once you meet Marion,” I said, “you’ll understand why I’m not interested in Joel, even if he is an attorney-or any other good-looking man.” I had my hand on the throttle when I realized how clumsily I’d spoken. Birdy, with her sharp sense of humor, couldn’t resist.

“You prefer guys who aren’t good-looking, huh?” she asked. “Smithie, you need to think this over.”

“You need to hang on,” I replied, and shoved the throttle forward. The redhead gave a startled whoop, and we were both laughing while I made a slow turn, then pointed my skiff south.

At South Seas Resort, I cut through Redfish Pass, dropped off plain and was soon idling along the back side of Captiva Island. To keep the off-duty deputy quiet, I pointed out houses owned by people I knew-multimillionaires, many of them, and some my clients-before I killed the engine and got off the first question, asking, “Remember the fishing reel missing from the attic?”

“That charity, nonprofit thing,” she said. “I’m glad you took the job. You’ll get to know your hot attorney better. Plus, I can help you if the bastards turn out to be con men.”

“I was talking about Teddy Roosevelt,” I said. “This is where he anchored his houseboat. Nineteen seventeen.”

“No kidding?” Birdy swiveled her head as if expecting to see a brass plaque.

“Maybe not the exact spot but close,” I said. We were drifting between Buck Key and Captiva, the gas dock at Jensen’s Marina to our right, several skiffs anchored off the pool bar at ’Tween Waters just ahead.

“Do people still harpoon giant stingrays? That reel must be worth a ton of money. Sounds to me like your grandfather must’ve been Teddy’s favorite fishing guide.”

The woman seldom asked one question at a time, but I was getting used to it. “Manta rays,” I corrected, “and it was my great-grandfather. But he was too young to captain a boat.”

“Teddy must have liked him, though. Vom Hofe, was he a famous reel maker? Quite a present to give a boy-or was he a teenager?”

I replied, “There was a local girl the president made friends with, too. She was younger, only nine or ten, but they say he liked people with spirit. He gave her a pair of boots. If I find the book he wrote-or maybe the library has a copy-there are photos of the manta rays they harpooned. Huge animals, the size of cars.”

“Teddy Roosevelt slept here,” Birdy said, smiling, her eyes taking in the scenery.

I told her the boat the president had lived on was a one-room house built on a barge that was fifty-some feet long. “For a while, it was anchored behind Castaway’s-that’s a nice place to stay when you get some time off. Years later, a storm pushed it way back in the mangroves. One day, if you want, we’ll try to find what’s left.”

In reply, Tupplemeyer asked several questions nonstop, which I didn’t have to answer because a friend of mine, Nathan Pace, appeared on a dock not far from where we were drifting. Nate had been skinny in high school but was now a bodybuilder and good-looking, despite a crooked tooth and his shyness.

“Damn, who’s the hunk?” Tupplemeyer whispered as we idled over to say hello. “I like guys with muscles. He’s gotta have money, too, if he lives there.”

No, but the famous photographer Nate sometimes slept with was wealthy-a nice man named Darren. I didn’t explain all this to Birdy, though, until we were a mile or two from Captiva. The tide had risen, and we soon had the mounds of Cushing Key in sight.

AS WE MUCKED our way toward the island’s interior, Deputy Tupplemeyer, who oozed confidence but who knew nothing about swamps, sounded uneasy when she asked, “Any snakes around here?”

By then, we were friendly enough to have traded several more barbs, so I was tempted to reply, No-alligators eat them all. I might have said it, too, if I thought she would have slowed her pace. Now that we were on land, following Birdy was like being pulled along by a propeller that had been revved too high or a generator that discharged currency into the ground. The woman’s energy seeped in through my feet, my ears, and was beginning to short-circuit my own more careful method of thinking.

Normally, I wouldn’t have put up with such a person. In fact, when she had latched onto the subject of Joel Ransler, I had come close to inventing an excuse to end the trip early. But I didn’t, and was glad. I admired the woman’s spirit. She was curious and enthusiastic about… well, everything, and her positive attitude was seeping into me as well. Plus, she was funny-often crude, true, but at least she came out and spoke her mind.

“I’d bet my ass there are snakes galore,” Birdy insisted, finally stopping for a breather. She used a tree limb to steady herself, looked to the left, then the right, seeing muck, spiderwebs glistening in the shadows, and a tangle of mangrove jungle where prop roots hung like bars in a cave. “Nothing else would live in a place like this.”

“Except for mosquitoes,” I said, then couldn’t help saying with a straight face, “Gators eat the snakes. No need to worry about them.”

Automatically, the deputy’s hand moved toward the holster she wasn’t wearing. “Alligators! You serious?”

“We get an occasional saltwater croc, too,” I replied.

“Shit, now she tells me. I should have brought my Glock.”

“They’re a protected species,” I reminded her.

“I’m a protected species, too, when I’m carrying a Glock,” the deputy answered. “Screw the law, how big?”

I was losing control, so walked ahead of her and didn’t look back. “Ten, sometimes twelve feet long. I’ve never seen a really big one. Not on this side of the island anyway.”

“This side of the island! Jesus Christ, I pity the poor guy you’re dating-what do you consider big?”

Now my chest was shaking, couldn’t help myself, so I kept walking.

She called after me, “Maybe we should head back to the boat. Hannah… where you going? Hey… Jungle Jane! Goddamn it, I’m talking to you!”

I stopped and turned and let my laughter go. When Birdy realized I was joking, she gave me a fierce look and hissed, “Asshole!” but soon was laughing, too, then tried to imitate a Southern accent. “Yep, big-ass gators’ll eat you city folk. Diddle you up the be-hind, too, if rattlers and rednecks turn scarce. Ya’ll gotta be mindful.” Her voice returned to normal. “Shit! Can’t believe I just got taken in by some rube chick.”

Now I was tearing up, I was laughing so hard. “Sorry… sorry,” I croaked. “The look on your face when I said gators… My lord!”

“Paybacks are hell, Smithie,” she fired back, then plucked a foot out of the muck and inspected her shoe. Almost new Reeboks-Tupplemeyer had gotten hooked on jogging while at the police academy and had shown me the soles to prove she ran three to five miles daily but had a pronation problem, or possibly the term was supination-she wasn’t sure but had promised to look it up when we got back.

“Those shoes are ruined,” I said. “At least I told you the truth about that.”

“Okay, okay, you were right, so stop harping,” she said, pulling her other foot out of the mud. “How much farther?” To the Indian mounds, she meant.

I was wearing cheap white rubber boots I always keep on the boat and was secretly pleased by her admission. “We’ll hose those down and throw them in the washer later,” I suggested. “You can meet Loretta.”

“Your mom? I’d like that. The poor woman has to be a saint to raise a daughter like you. Did you hear what I just asked?”

“Weird,” I smiled. “I’ve been thinking the same thing about your mother.” I continued walking before answering, “Not far. Once we get on the mounds, there really could be rattlesnakes. Pygmy rattlers, mostly-I’m serious this time. But they’re not aggressive, so don’t worry.”

“Not aggressive,” she says, “my ass. You go first. I’ll follow from now on.”

Near the center of Cushing Key were two shell mounds that rose abruptly out of the swamp like miniature volcanoes but cloaked by trees, Spanish bayonet plants, and cactus. We saw no snakes but used cell phones to photograph shards of pottery and tools made from big whelk and conch shells. Artifacts everywhere.

“It’s pronounced konk, not cawnsh,” I corrected Tupplemeyer for the second time. She had summoned me to the western edge of the highest mound where she’d found a wall of conch shells embedded like bricks, the sharp ends pointed outward.

“A defense against invaders,” the former archaeology major told me. “I read about this. There’s no rock around here to quarry-that’s what the Maya and Aztec did. So they used shells. All four sides of the pyramid covered with shell spikes except for one path to the top. Smart, huh? These things would cut the hell out of someone.”

She was referencing the sketches she’d seen by Frank Cushing-the island’s namesake-who the Smithsonian had sent to Florida in the 1890s.

The redhead knelt and took more photos but had yet to so much as touch a shell or a piece of pottery-shards of baked clay, yellow-orange, that had accumulated over the thousands of years people had hunted and cooked and lived their lives here. I was impressed by the respect she was showing for the state that was her new home.

“Whoa… look at this!” Birdy called after pulling foliage away. Then began snapping more photos while I squatted beside her. She had found a large conch horn, its point sawed off as a mouthpiece, and part of a bowl with a triangular pattern etched around the rim. It was so simple and eloquent, I tried to imagine the artist-a woman, no doubt-who had lived on this island and who had done her work with extra care.

The redhead, apparently, felt a connection, too, because she stood, tilted her nose up, and said, “Does the air seem… heavier here to you? In Tikal, it was exactly the same.”

“That’s in Guatemala?” I asked.

The deputy nodded while she rearranged leaves to cover the pottery shard. “Some jerk will cart this off if he finds it. I don’t know why I’m so attracted to places like this, but… they give me the weirdest feeling. Powerful, you know?” She looked up, her expression intense, a tinge of anger showing, too. “We’ve got to find those artifacts that bitch had hauled away. You still up for it?”

I replied, “I’ve got a story about Dr. Candor. She’s an alcoholic, I think. Or crazy. Maybe both. One thing I know for sure is, she’s trying to run the locals out of Sulfur Wells, Loretta and me included. That woman’s vindictive, and I don’t want you to lose your job.” I described last night’s scene on the dock, then started to share what I’d uncovered about the couple, but no need-Tupplemeyer knew more about the Candors than I realized.

“They’re both dirty,” Birdy said. “This morning, I figured out where they sent those dump trucks-and it wasn’t to a public landfill. They filed for a zoning variance on some wetlands near one of their rehab clinics. Documents that were dated Monday, but they’ve owned the property for more than a year. The application claims the land’s actually above the floodplain.” Tupplemeyer’s tone emphasized the importance of the time lag.

“Where?” I asked.

“Inland, near some little town in Sematee County. About an hour’s drive.”

“That’s Joel Ransler’s area,” I said. “He’s got a friend who works in the planning department, Delmont Chatham, an older man. He’s been on my boat. Is planning department the same as zoning?” I was thinking that Mr. Chatham, a charter client, might be willing to speak with me.

The off-duty deputy shrugged. “Ask your handsome attorney. I guarantee he knows who the Candors are-or, at least, about their clinic. It’s one of those revolving-door rehab facilities that targets public funding. Just like they did in Ohio-prescribe meds, then treat the very same patients when they get hooked. That’s why the Candors are still rich. They know how the system works.”

Dr. Alice Candor had told me the same thing, bragging about it.

I asked, “Is the property near the clinic? If it is, security’s going to be more than just one guard driving around in a golf cart.”

“Stop worrying! Where I think they dumped the stuff is half a mile from the actual facility-you know, the buildings where they keep patients.” Birdy paused to look at me as if gauging my courage, then asked, “Do you have anything planned for tonight?”

She’s leading you into trouble, a voice warned, which is why I replied, “You know I do.” As we’d left Sulfur Wells, I had pointed to the cabins known as Munchkinville and explained I was going to question the owners about their charity donations. But I hadn’t said tonight.

“How about we do this,” the deputy suggested. “We’ll split up the cabins and go door-to-door-” She stopped in midsentence, a woman who was easily distracted, and tilted her nose again. “Smell that? You know what I mean about the air?”

No, but I was happy to switch subjects. “The mounds have a different smell to them, that’s true. It could be the trees-gumbo-limbos and key lime trees, and one called white stopper-it’s got an unusual smell. They made a medicine out of the leaves to stop diarrhea.”

Birdy shook her head in a way that told me I wasn’t close, which gave me an idea. “I’ve got a friend you should meet,” I said. “You two are opposites in most ways, but he’d understand. And he’s fun. Tomlinson’s his name.”

“A mystic, huh?” the redhead said, either not interested or she didn’t believe me. But several minutes later, as we hiked back to the boat, she asked, “Is this guy another one of your gay buddies or is he married?”

That made me smile. “Keeping your bra snapped is the only problem women have with Tomlinson. He lives on a sailboat in Dinkin’s Bay-that’s Sanibel.”

“Is it on the way home?” she asked.

Dinkin’s Bay was three miles southwest, but it was safer than sneaking around rehab clinics after dark. I replied, “It can be.”

“Great. But if we stay late, we’ll drive up there and search tomorrow. My shift ends at six, so we can leave around seven. Okay?”

When I asked, “Where’s this place again?” she picked up her phone and told me, “I’ll send you the link.”

HOURS LATER, I was alone in Marion Ford’s lab, waiting for Birdy to return from Tomlinson’s sailboat, when impatience caused me to open my phone. Instead of dialing Birdy, I sat down, surprised, because I saw the link for the first time.

Sematee Evaluation and Treatment Clinic, Carnicero, Florida

The clinic had a different box number, but it used the same little Carnicero post office as the charity Fisherfolk of South Florida Inc.

Rather than calling my new friend, I texted, How much longer? We need to talk.

It took awhile, but the off-duty deputy finally replied, Float on, Smithie

, which told me I would have to wait until morning-but only because she added the smiley face.