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.”
