“His pappy, then. You said he liked to hoist a glass. I’ve been known to frequent the local groggeries myself on rare occasions.”
“Albert Dance was his name. His son was Jack.”
“No, doesn’t ring a bell. Unusual name, Dance. I’m sure I’d remember it. Was this the marina where you tied up?”
“As a matter of fact, it was.”
“There might be some folks here who’d know you.”
“I imagine so. Mickey Cotter, for one. He was a security guard at the time.”
“And he still is. He’s an old man now-older than me, if you young folks can imagine such a thing-but he keeps on working. Mans the guardhouse from midnight to seven.”
Steve was pleased to hear that. “Well, if you see him, let him know that Steve Gardner is here for a visit. He might not recall the name, but he’ll remember Mr. Dance’s boat. Twenty-five-foot flybridge cruiser called the Light Fantastic. Mickey has a memory for boats.”
“That he does.” Pice smiled. “You know, it’s comical. Here I’ve been sounding off about Pelican Key like you’re a pair of ordinary tourists, and you know the island better than I do.”
“Steve knows it,” Kirstie said. “I don’t. I’ve never even been to Florida before.”
Pice picked up the suitcase again. “Well, you beautify the landscape, ma’am. Believe me, you do.”
He boarded the boat, lugging the suitcase and whistling.
“What do you think?” Steve asked Kirstie once Pice was out of earshot.
She smiled. “I think he is Black Caesar, reincarnated. All he’s missing is a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder.”
“You never know. He just might have that parrot around someplace.” He took her hand. “Our captain is right about one thing. You do beautify the landscape.”
“Oh, stop,” she whispered, turning away.
The trip got under way a few minutes later. Anastasia stretched out in the cockpit. Pice took the helm seat on the flying bridge, and Kirstie settled into the bench behind him. Steve remained on the dock long enough to cast off the bow and stern lines, then jumped aboard.
Pice started the twin diesel engines, engaged the astern gears with a double clunk, and carefully throttled back, easing the boat out of its berth. When the bow was clear of the dock, he swung toward the channel, shifted to the ahead gears, and nursed the paired throttle levers forward. The Black Caesar chugged into the entrance channel at a cautious speed.
Steve climbed the ladder to the flying bridge and sat down beside Kirstie.
“Seasick yet?” he inquired.
She showed him her tongue. “Does it look green?”
“No more than usual.”
They passed between the buoys marking the harbor entrance. Pice headed southwest, past Shell Key, then motored under a bridge festooned with fishing lines into Hawk Channel, the waterway between the Keys and the reef.
They were running east now, toward the sun. Pelican Key was ahead somewhere in the brassy glare.
Steve was too fidgety to stay seated. He rose, bracing himself against a stainless-steel safety rail, and drew deep breaths of the briny sea air, swallowing it like food.
From this vantage point he could look down unobtrusively over Pice’s shoulder and read the tachometers and oil-pressure gauges on the control console. He watched the tach needles climb to 2,000 rpm as Pice opened the port and starboard throttles a little wider. A light spray misted the windshield; the wipers beat briefly to clean it.
Ahead, a boiling cloud of gulls flocked over a fishing boat as it steamed toward the Gulf Stream beyond the reef. To the south lay Indian Key; at their backs, Upper Matecumbe. Both receded, leaving Pelican Key to its-how had Pice put it-its “blessed isolation.”
That isolation was perhaps part of the reason why the place had never been developed into a resort hotel complex or a tournament golf course. Route 1, the elevated highway that played connect-the-dots with most of the islands, had missed Pelican Key by three miles. Henry Flagler’s railroad, built years earlier and demolished in the hurricane of ’35, had come no closer. No bridge or causeway linked Upper Matecumbe to Pelican Key. The only access to it was by boat, helicopter, or seaplane.
Nobody had ever much desired to go there anyway. Compared with most other local islands, Pelican Key was small-only three-quarters of a mile long and a quarter-mile wide-and a good part of its hundred and twenty acres was taken up by mangrove swamp. Hardly a developer’s dream.
A lime plantation operated on Pelican Key during the early years of this century; the Depression shut it down. After that, the island remained unwanted until Donald Larson bought it in 1946. Larson was a young man who’d already made a great deal of money in aviation and was destined to make much more. His dream was to restore the plantation house, a victim of time and storms, and retire to it someday.
Someday didn’t come until 1980, when Larson, no longer young, finally began the renovations planned decades earlier. In the interim he’d fought a fierce, protracted battle with the state government, which had wanted to purchase Pelican Key and preserve it as a park.
Larson held on to the property and forestalled an eminent-domain ruling only by guaranteeing that no further development would be attempted there, either in his lifetime or afterward. The house and other features already present would be repaired, modernized, and maintained; otherwise, Pelican Key would remain as the coral polyps and red mangrove had made it.
He was true to his word. And from 1981 onward he lived in the big limestone house on the island’s south end, enjoying, no doubt, his blessed isolation.
When he died two years ago, in 1992, his heirs faced the dilemma of what to do with Pelican Key. A considerable tax write-off could be realized by donating it to the state of Florida. But some residue of the elder Larson’s stubborn pride and sentimental attachment to the island had prevented such a move.
Instead the estate continued to maintain the house and pay the property taxes, offsetting part of the costs by renting out Pelican Key to vacationers as a private retreat, on a monthly basis in season, with biweekly deals available during the hot, wet summer months.
Steve had found out about the vacation rentals in March. The need to return to the island had been driving him like a quiet frenzy ever since.
“I see it,” Kirstie said suddenly, leaning forward.
Steve craned his neck, following her gaze, and picked out a smear of tropical verdure against the blinding sun.
Close now. Unexpectedly close, appearing out of the dazzle like a vision in a dream.
Down in the cockpit, Anastasia barked, as if in confirmation of the sighting.
“There’s the house.” Pice pointed. “See the windows shining like coins?”
Steve nodded eagerly. “Yes. I see.” A broad tile roof was visible now, partly screened by branches. “Larson must have gone all out on the restoration. The place was a ruin when Jack and I used to come here.”
“Could you go inside?” Kirstie asked.
“Oh, sure. Found a dead coral snake in a bathtub once. Must have crawled in there for some reason and died.”
Her nose wrinkled prettily. “Remind me not to bathe for the next two weeks.”
“Don’t worry. It’s a big bathtub. Plenty of room for you and a snake.”
The rap of her knuckles on his arm was meant to be playful, but hurt anyway.
The Black Caesar motored closer. Pice glanced back at them with a grin. “What do you say we circle her once, just to say hello?”
He was already steering the boat northeast. The mangrove fringe on the island’s western side blurred past- dense clumps of twisted trees, foreboding and mysterious, the eldritch landscape of another world.
At the north end, there was a small cove, a semicircle of shallow water, mirror-lustrous, bordered by mangroves and stands of hardwood trees.
“That’s where we used to beach the dinghy,” Steve said, remembering. “There’s a Calusa Indian midden not far inland-you know, a shell mound. The salt ponds are nearby, too.”
