Orchid Beach

CHAPTER

22

Holly worked seven days a week for her first two weeks on the job. She concentrated on getting to know her force by name and assignment, and on getting to know their experience and capabilities. There were four women on the force, none of them on the street; she rotated them onto patrols and decided that the next four vacancies she had would go to women applicants. She discussed this with Hurd Wallace, who nodded and said little. She was becoming accustomed to his reptilian stillness and his reticent manner, and she began to know that he had a good grasp of the department. He was a capable man, and she wondered why Chet Marley had been reluctant to promote him further. Chet occasionally showed signs of coming out of his coma, but always regressed.

Late in her third week, on Friday afternoon, she had a phone call.

“Holly Barker,” she said.

“It’s Jackson.”

She had been dreading this. She wanted to see him, but was reluctant to do so.

“You were supposed to call me two weeks ago,” he said.

“Jackson, I’m sorry. Look, let me lay my cards on the table. I feel that I’m under the gun here. The city council has already told me they’d prefer to have somebody else in this job, and I don’t want to give them anything to use against me. I think they might frown on a police officer seeing somebody who’s on the opposite side in the courtroom.”

“Do you really think that’s a legitimate concern?”

“No, but it’s a concern.”

“Let me ask you straight out, Holly: do you have any interest in me?”

“Yes, I do,” she said without hesitation. “But I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t think we should be seen together in restaurants and at the movies, not until I’ve got my feet firmly on the ground here and have more political support.”

“That’s prudent, and I understand completely.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” she said.

“I think the solution to our problem is not to appear together in public.”

“Thank you for understanding.”

“I think the immediate solution is for me to cook you dinner at my house tonight.”

She laughed. “Well, I guess that’s not too public. Can I bring Daisy?”

“Do you go anywhere without that dog?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Here’s what you do: When you leave your trailer park, turn right and drive three point three miles south—I measured it—then turn left into a dirt driveway. There’s no sign, not even a mailbox. Follow that road to its end, and you’re there. Seven o’clock?”

“Okay, you’re on.” She hung up and sighed. Her resolve had vanished at the first opportunity.

Holly missed the driveway and had to turn around and hunt for it. It was no wonder: the narrow dirt road was nearly overgrown on both sides, and branches scraped against her car as she drove. Daisy was sniffing the air.

“Smell the ocean, Daisy? It’s got to be down here somewhere.” It was. By the time she came to the house, she could hear the surf. The house appeared to be fairly old and was neatly painted white, with green hurricane shutters. Jackson Oxenhandler was standing on the porch, waiting for her.

“You’re fashionably late,” he called as she got out of her car, walked up the stairs and presented her lips for a light kiss.

“My mother brought me up not to appear too eager,” Holly replied. “What a nice place.”

“Come on inside,” Jackson said. He led her into a large room that seemed to cover most of the first floor, along with a kitchen, separated from the living room by only a counter.

“Wait a minute,” she said, stopping and looking around her. “How does a public defender who wears unpressed suits and drives a fifteen-year-old car afford a place like this in Orchid, and right on the beach?”

“You’re a suspicious person,” Jackson said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“Well, I’m only occasionally a public defender. A decent litigator gets paid fairly well in Orchid, and occasionally I get a plum. This place was a plum. Come have a look out front.” He led her out onto a broad front porch overlooking dunes that led down to the sea, less than a hundred yards away.

“This is just perfect,” she said. “Tell me about the plum.”

“I defended a rather well-off citrus grower who was stopped by the cops for speeding, and who turned out to have twenty kilos of cocaine in his trunk, which came as something of a surprise to him.”

“Did you get him off?”

“Of course. He was innocent. One of his fruit pickers had used his car to transport the goods when the boss was out of town. The owner returned unexpectedly, before the man had a chance to transfer the dope. It took me nearly a year to get him off, and he ran up quite a legal bill. I took this property in exchange for services, then I saw something in the paper about an old Florida farmhouse that was about to be torn down and was being offered practically free to anyone who would move it. I took a look at it, paid a hundred bucks for it, had it sawn in half, moved down here and reassembled. A couple of hundred grand later, it is as you see it. I had to get a mortgage, but it was quite a bargain.”

“It’s just grand,” she said. “How’d you ever get the house down that driveway?”

“There was no driveway when I moved it, just open land. I planted all that foliage you drove through. Things grow fast around here. Take a rocking chair, and I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?”

“You decide,” she said, plopping down in a chair. Daisy curled up at her feet.

Jackson went away, and Holly took in the sky and ocean before her. The setting sun lit the huge cumulus clouds and turned them pink, and the blue water reflected the color. Jackson was back in a couple of minutes with a cocktail shaker and two glasses.

He strained a clear, green-tinted liquid into the glasses and handed her one. “Your continued good health,” he said, raising a glass.

“And yours,” she replied, sipping the lime-flavored cocktail. “What is this?”

“Vodka gimlet,” he said. “Vodka and Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice, shaken very cold.”

“Delicious,” she said. “What did you mean, my continued good health?”

“You’re healthy—I’d like to see you remain that way.”

“Do you have some reason to believe I might not?”

“To tell you the truth, after your story about the gas bottle and the flare, I’ve half expected to hear that something had happened to you. That would have explained why you didn’t call, and anyway, I figured that nothing short of hospitalization would have stopped you.”

She laughed. “I did have to stop myself,” she said.

“If you’re worried about what the city council thinks about us, don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s take them one at a time: Charlie Peterson is a sweet guy and couldn’t care less; Howard Goldman is a mensch; you know what that means?”

“Yiddish for a sweet guy?”

“Right. Frank Hessian, the vet, is just indifferent, couldn’t care less.”

“What about John Westover and Irma Taggert?”

“They’re the least of your worries, since they’ve been screwing each other for years, unbeknownst to his wife and her husband.”

“You’re kidding! Westover and that prim lady?”

“She’s apparently not so prim. Guy I know walked into Westover’s office at the car dealership one day and interrupted John and Irma in the middle of a quickie.”

Holly nearly choked on her drink. “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it.”

From somewhere inside the house, a single chime rang.

“Excuse me a minute,” Jackson said. He set down his drink, got up and went into the house. It was becoming a little chilly, so Holly followed, bringing their drinks. To her surprise, he went to an umbrella stand beside the back door and retrieved from it a pump shotgun, a riot gun with an eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel, the kind the police use. He pumped the shotgun once, held it behind him, opened the door a couple of inches and peered down the driveway.

“What’s going on?” Holly asked, alarmed.

“Visitors,” Jackson said. “Are you armed?”

“In my handbag.”

“Get it, please.”