Deceived

3

My mother peppered me with barbs and questions, saying things like, “Is that a bounce in your step or are you walking funny?” And, “Because you didn’t phone last night, I worried about a car wreck or worse. Are you in some kind of trouble with the law?”

I’ve lived on my own for years, I didn’t have to explain, but it was the opening I’d been waiting for. “No, Loretta,” I replied, “but I’m tempted to call the police right now. I was in the attic yesterday while you were at bingo. The big trunk was open and some of the family things are missing. Know anything about it?”

I’d discovered it while attempting to show Delmont Chatham the fishing tackle stored in the attic, particularly a reel that had been given to my great-grandfather by Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt had come to Captiva Island in 1917 to harpoon giant manta rays and he’d been impressed by the young boy who would become Captain Mason Smith. The former president had also written a small book about the trip called Harpooning Devilfish, in which he had mentioned my great-grandfather. The book was gone, too.

Yes, Loretta knew something about it. I could tell by the way she sniffed and instantly changed the subject.

“Have you noticed that idiot dog’s not barking?”

She was referring to the neighbor’s toy Pekingese. The question was irksome because, fact was, I had noticed the unusual silence. My mother continued, “It’s because of what happened last night. An owl snatched that dog while he was outside weeing and carried him to the tree above my bedroom. The moon was so bright, I saw the whole thing.”

I sighed. Another one of my mother’s stories. And, really, I didn’t care. Nor did I care about my neighbors. They had finished their warehouse-sized concrete-and-stucco a few months earlier, after flattening a centuries-old Indian mound in the process, but had only recently moved in. The destruction of what had once been a shell pyramid was repellent, but I wasn’t going to be lured off on a tangent.

“We were talking about that missing fishing reel,” I insisted.

“How’s a woman who gets no sleep expected to remember anything?” she said in an accusing way. “Lord A’mighty, you’ve never heard such a terrible yowling in your life, and pray you never do. You’ve seen that monster owl-he roosts in the oaks behind the house.”

No, I hadn’t, but I’d heard him calling, a baritone boom-boom-boom that was sometimes answered by owls on neighboring islands miles away. “Maybe some sweet tea will improve your memory,” I said, and went to make it.

“I’m not going to sit here and lie,” she continued, pressing her advantage. “I didn’t like that ugly ball of hair. He’d hike his leg on my collards and pooed in the garden-any wonder I haven’t made greens lately? That new neighbor woman and I had words about that, believe me! But the dog hasn’t been born deserves to be eaten by a giant bird.”

My mother sat back in her recliner, reached for the TV remote and added, “Suppose I could use something cool to drink, darlin’. This time, don’t be so stingy with the sugar.”

I had no idea, of course, that the missing reel would turn out to be significant or that its disappearance would convince me that my mother and her friends were being victimized by thieves whose conscience had been replaced by sickness, and who were capable of theft, and even murder. So I allowed my attention to waver. Had Loretta actually seen an owl swoop down and grab the neighbor’s pet Pekingese? The woman’s damaged brain followed strange branches and was sometimes confused. However, she was also smart enough to use that impairment to disguise her true motives or to conceal her own bad behavior. Truth was, I suspected that she’d probably sold the reel or traded it for marijuana, which she had never admitted using but was quick to praise as a healing drug. Loretta had always been tricky when it suited her needs, a trait I’d found irksome even as a little girl.

“There’s no reason to make up stories,” I warned, ice crackling as I poured tea into a pitcher. “I just want to know where the family antiques have disappeared to.”

The reel and the book weren’t the only items missing from the attic.

“The dog’s dead,” Loretta repeated. “You’ve been here, what, an hour? How many times you heard that little rat yapping?” She motioned toward the pitcher. “And don’t forget the sugar!”

It was true that the dog barked all day most days, including yesterday when my clients had followed me up the shell mound to the house. But on this warm April afternoon, I’d yet to hear a peep.

“That is kind of strange,” I said.

“Biggest owl I’ve ever seen,” my mother replied, as she’d just proven her point.

“Maybe I should go next door and ask about him.”

Loretta sat up straight. “Don’t you dare! Say anything, those people will suspect I had something to do with it. Besides, they probably started drinking already. Afternoons, they sit on the porch and play tropical music. I can practically smell the booze.”

My mother’s tone forced an awful possibility into my head. “Loretta, please tell you didn’t hurt their dog.”

My mother didn’t make eye contact. “What in the world you talking about?”

“You heard me. Did you run over that poor little thing last night or take him somewhere? Someone used Jake’s truck-don’t think I didn’t notice it’s been moved.” Yesterday, my late uncle’s old Ford had been in the carport where it belonged. Now it was parked in the shade of an avocado tree.

“How could I?” she answered. “You took my keys and cut up my driver’s license.”

The part about cutting up her license was fantasy, but I was thinking, Uh-oh. “Someone used that truck,” I said, “and it wouldn’t be the first time you snuck out on your own.”

My mother glared. “Now you’re accusing me of being a dog killer and a liar!” She got to her feet and shuffled toward the counter, where I let her slip past, then watched as she poured her own tea and dumped in half the sugar bowl.

“A neighbor borrowed it, if you have to know,” she replied after a sip. “Check the yard for owl pellets. Also pieces of curly red hair and a blue ribbon. Bound to be spread all over the property. Probably a collar, too, but I doubt owls eat rhinestones.”

Incredible, I thought, she means it, and had to fight back a smile. The ugly fact was, I wanted to believe her story. The Pekingese had been as mean-natured and snappish as the new neighbors themselves. Twice the little dog had cornered me on our dock, yapping his shrill head off, then nipped at my ankles as I went by, once breaking the skin. Had I filed a lawsuit, as some suggested, my worries about paying my mother’s medical bills might be over because the neighbors were rumored to be wealthy. I didn’t sue, of course. Didn’t even bother to do a background check on the people to confirm if the rumors were true. My late uncle’s business is a licensed, bonded private investigation agency, so I know how to access such information, but snooping into people’s private lives is not a privilege I abuse.

One last time I tried to steer the subject back to the missing reel but gave up after listening, instead, to how Loretta’s vegetables would prosper now that the Pekingese was gone. She had never been a particularly affectionate mother, we’d never been close, but I couldn’t deny she was a first-rate gardener and loved tending her plants. First thing she did each morning was carry her coffee out to visit her collards and squash, then confirm the tomatoes were properly staked. The garden was her last call every evening, too, even on Wednesday nights when she had church.

I didn’t want to hear about the garden right now, though, and I was about to manufacture an excuse to go outside and check my boat when an excuse was provided for me. A knock came at the screen door: a little man in a suit, holding a folder under his arm. Behind him was a deputy sheriff-a woman deputy, red hair, petite, one nervous hand tapping at her holster, a name tag that read L. Tupplemeyer on her uniform.

Now what? I wondered.

“MRS. SMITH?” the man asked.

“That’s right,” I replied, not hesitating to lie. It was a way of shielding my mother from involvement. Loretta gets jumpy when policemen come around-a guilty conscience, I’ve always suspected-which has only gotten worse since her stroke. “Let’s walk outside to talk,” I suggested, and let the two follow me away from the porch.

When we were near the carport, the man put a paper into my hand and said, “You’ve been notified.” Then handed me several more sheets stapled to a yellow tag. “If you have questions, I can explain the basics or you can have your attorney contact our office. We don’t have a lot of time today, sorry-lots more stops to make.”

Deputy Tupplemeyer had parked her squad car around the bend, I noticed, midway between the house and a row of bayside cabins-Munchkinville, as I had told Mr. Chatham. The cabins had been built during the same period as the fish shacks and some weren’t in great shape-unpainted boats on blocks, cast nets hanging among stacks of wooden stone-crab traps. Apparently, Loretta wasn’t the only resident the man had plans to visit.

“Why in the world would I need an attorney?” I asked, reading what appeared to be a cover letter.

“That’s something you should ask an attorney,” he replied, which irritated me.

The letterhead read Florida Division of Historical Resources, Bureau of Archaeological Research. The first paragraph, which struck me as threatening, began You are hereby ordered to repair/replace/remove the structures and/or vegetation as listed on the pages attached. This must be done within 5 business days…

I flipped a page to skip ahead and looked up, my eyes moving from the little man wearing the suit to the county deputy. “This isn’t from the local zoning department,” I said. “Who are you?”

As the man told me his name, I flipped another page and soon felt my face coloring because of what came next: You are in violation of ordinances that: 1. Prohibit planting exotic vegetation. 2. Disturbing/altering property designated as archaeologically or historically important…

That was enough for me, no need to continue.

“I think you have the wrong address,” I said. “My family has owned this property for longer than you’ve been alive and we don’t plant anything more exotic than jasmine or bougainvillea-which are flowers, in case you don’t know, not illegal plants. Unless this is about the vegetable garden, which would be silly.”

The smug look on the man’s face told me It is about the garden.

“You can’t be serious?” I said.

The man confirmed that he was with a nod. “Unless you planted native species, a vegetable garden doesn’t belong here. In your packet, there’s a phone number for the extension agency. This island has been redesignated and the agents know it, so they’re expecting a lot of calls.”

Which made me mad enough to forget I was impersonating Loretta. “Redesignated historical-I know that. It happened more than a year ago.”

“Then you should be in compliance by now, shouldn’t you?” The man smiled.

I’m not a violent person, but I wanted to slap the smug look off his face. “This is ridiculous. My mother could have another stroke if she sees this letter. You should have better things to do than pick on invalid ladies who enjoy gardening.”

The man proved he didn’t by studying my late uncle’s truck, which was parked in the shade, then spoke to the deputy. “That tree? It’s an avocado. That wasn’t mentioned in the report, but it has to go. Avocados, mangoes-it’s the same as citrus. They’re all exotics. We should check the backyard before my next stop.”

“That tree’s a hundred years old!” I argued, which might have been true but probably wasn’t. Then asked, “Is that why she’s here? You’ve got to bring an armed deputy to protect you?”

The petite woman gave me a tough cop look that she’d probably seen in movies and spoke for the first time, her accent unmistakably Boston. “The state of Florida doesn’t want any trouble with locals. That’s why I’ve been assigned-ma’am.”

I shot her a hard look of my own and replied, “Then the state of Florida should relocate to a place that doesn’t attract hurricanes-or tourists from Massachusetts.”

It took Deputy Tupplemeyer a second to remember where she had been born. “Hey! Are you looking for trouble?”

“No,” I told her, “I’m looking for a reason not to order you off my property and I can’t think of a single one.” I indicated the neighbor’s new house, a mountain of concrete that dwarfed the poinciana and coconut palms separating our properties. “Those are the people you should be serving papers. They trucked off most of an Indian mound to build that house, then terraced the landscaping. Where was your agency then? They dumped a thousand years of pottery and artifacts somewhere-they won’t even tell the archaeologists. But no one from the government said a word! Now you’re bothering me about avocados and some pole beans? If I had either one of your jobs, I’d quit and do something I could be proud of.”

To signal I was done reading, and done with the conversation, I folded the sheath of papers but also used those few seconds to tell myself, Calm down. Right or wrong, arguing with a police officer is always a bad choice, and I didn’t want to push it too far. Plus, my mother’s garden was at stake, and Loretta, who does have her sweet moments, didn’t have much in life but tending her plants, putting up canned vegetables, and bingo.

The little man was getting nervous, a bit of sweat showing above his lip, and I expected Deputy Tupplemeyer to put me in my place with something stern. Instead, she said, “I’ve never heard of Indian mounds in Florida,” sounding cop-like and cynical but also interested.

“You’re standing on one,” I replied. “Pyramids made of shell before the Spaniards arrived.”

The deputy turned to the little man. “She’s kidding, right? I thought they were hills.”

He was remarking on the subject’s unimportance when his phone buzzed, which allowed the deputy to ask me a couple more questions before explaining, “I spent two weeks in Guatemala. The ruins there. Mayan-it was for a course I was taking. Copán, too. Three weeks, that trip, then a month when I was in college.” She had her hands on her hips, looking at the topography, maybe trying to imagine if what I’d told her was possible.

I asked, “East-west pyramids, is that the way the Maya built their cities?”

“You’d have to see for yourself to understand the attraction,” she replied as if mishearing. But then added, “Yeah, the Maya were astronomers.”

“Same with the people here,” I said, then pointed to a distant island. “See the high trees? That’s the western pyramid. The first day of spring, the sun sets right over it. We’re standing on the eastern pyramid-what’s left of it anyway. Farther east, there’re three burial mounds.”

The deputy looked at the man, who was putting his phone away, then at the house next door, her eyes taking in the terraced lawn, construction residue, insulation, broken stringers stacked by the road. The tracks of a bulldozer, too, used to flatten the mound and load dump trucks that had waited in a line. Then she asked him, “How could they get away with something like that?”

The man shook his head, getting more nervous by the second. “Permits and variances don’t go through my department,” he responded, which was an attempt to distance himself, but it also confirmed the truth as far as the deputy was concerned.

“A thousand years old,” she said, thinking about it.

“Some artifacts, they’ve dated back four or five thousand years,” I told her.

“Here?”

“Right where we’re standing, pottery and shell tools-the artifacts the neighbors didn’t have hauled off to the dump, or wherever they took it. About fifteen or twenty tons of shell mound, just disappeared.”

“There’s something very wrong about that,” Deputy Tupplemeyer told the little man. Then had to show her authority over me by adding, “You shouldn’t be digging a garden either. Like the law says. Not if this is an archaeological site.”

I was explaining that my grandfather had raised pineapples on the plot where vegetables now grew, so it was too late to apologize, we couldn’t go back in time, but we had drawn the line at bulldozing history. That’s when I noticed that the neighbor woman had come outside and was watching. Alice Candor was her name, a medical doctor, local gossip claimed. She had a dog leash in one hand and was using the other to talk on a cell phone. A tall woman, bulky but not obese, with whom I’d never spoken but had seen a few times, distinctive in her appearance, always wearing dark baggy clothes. Often caftans, and she liked scarves. She was dressed that way now, whispering into the phone and watching, until she realized I’d spotted her, then spun her back to me.

That’s when a little light went off in my head. “That’s who complained about the garden, isn’t it? The new neighbors reported us, that’s why you’re here.”

“Who?” the deputy asked, then became official. “Doesn’t matter who did it, the names are confidential.”

The man said, “Of course they are,” but gave it all away when the neighbor woman suddenly knelt to retrieve something off the ground, froze for an instant, then bolted away, shrieking, her screams so piercing they spooked crows from the trees.

The man panicked and began to jog after her, calling, “Something must have bit her! Dr. Candor’s hurt!”

No, the doctor had found her missing Pekingese.