or had at least a vague description of the killer.
But until such time as they did, Julian insisted, releasing the information could only cause widespread panic, draw unwanted attention and publicity to the investigation, and possibly wreck the upcoming tourist season, which was almost entirely dependent on the big cruise liners that in two weeks would begin docking at the end of the long pier extending from the eastern tip of Frederikshavn Harbor.
Pender agreed with Julian, reluctantly and provisionally. He spent the rest of the morning in his office, catching up on all the reports filed yesterday. But paper could only tell you so much-after lunch Pender decided that he needed to take a firsthand look at the site where the first two bodies had been discovered. Julian offered to put an officer and a squad car at his disposal, but Pender said if it was all the same to him, he’d just as soon stick with the unmarked Vespa.
“Go wit’ God, but drive cyareful,” Chief Coffee replied in dialect. “Dem nort’ end road ain’ fa the fain’ of heart, me son.”
Pender might not have been faint of heart, but he was definitely a little weak in the knees after negotiating the steep switchbacks of the descent from the top of the Carib cliffs to the picturesque lagoon known as Smuggler’s Cove. Julian’s instructions had been to walk the motorbike around the grove of manchineel trees and park it in the sea grape bushes that ringed the beach. Instead, Pender walked it through the grove and parked it in the shade of the manchineels.
As he started to chain the Vespa to one of the gray-barked trees, Pender saw someone swimming in the lagoon, and realized that the swimmer was, in the following order: white; a white woman; a nude white woman. He quickly looked away, glanced back, then turned his back and finished chaining the Vespa-a gentleman may peek, but he never stares.
But when the woman called to him-or so he assumed: there was nobody else in sight-he turned and saw her waving her arms over her head. She was in obvious distress, though whether for him or for herself, Pender couldn’t tell. “What? What is it, what’s wrong?”
“The wood, the manchineel, it’s poison,” she called. “Corrosive, like acid. You have to wash it off-hurry. And whatever you do, don’t rub your eyes.”
Pender didn’t need to be told twice-he toed off his Hush Puppies and ran for the water, tossing his wallet onto the sand en route. He fancied he could already feel the back of his right forearm burning where he’d rubbed it against the manchineel trunk. He waded in; when the water reached his waist he dived forward and submerged himself.
When he surfaced, chest deep, the woman was beside him, telling him to undress. He stripped down to the buff, and together they scrubbed his clothes in the salt water until the caustic sap had been washed off.
“Thanks,” he told her. “I owe you one.” With an effort that would have earned him a knighthood if he’d been a subject of the queen, Pender kept his eyes trained on hers. “I’m Ed Pender. I normally introduce myself before I get naked with a woman.”
“I’m Dawson.”
“C. B. Dawson?”
“Unh-hunh,” she said, surprised.
“Holly Gold mentioned your name-I was up at the Core yesterday investigating a missing persons report on your ex-boyfriend.”
“You’re a cop?”
“FBI. Retired. Miss Gold didn’t tell you?”
“I haven’t been home since yesterday.” Tourist season was coming up, she explained-time to harvest calabash. “If you girdle the gourds with wire when they’re green, you can distort them into all kinds of shapes. Then I hollow them out and carve them into bowls, vases-whatever their shapes tell me they want to become.”
And afterward, she told Pender, she’d slung her hammock between two stout calabash trees and spent the night in the forest.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Perfectly safe, I do it all the time. No dangerous animals, and the mongoose wiped out the snakes a hundred years ago. Now, of course, there’s a mongoose problem.”
“Do you want me to turn my back while you go ashore and get dressed?” Pender asked her.
“It’s a clothing optional beach,” replied Dawson, more than a little charmed by his courtliness-it was not a quality with which most of the men she’d met on St. Luke were overendowed. “If you don’t mind, I don’t mind.”
She still had a hell of a figure for a middle-aged woman, Pender couldn’t help but notice as they waded out of the water together. Gorgeous face, too, with a generous mouth and dark eyes set wide apart. And strangely familiar-looking, as if he’d seen her before someplace, or known her when she was younger. When they were both younger.
Of course, Pender had had the same feeling about Diane, his last girlfriend but one, he reminded himself, and it had taken him several weeks to puzzle out where he’d seen Diane before: she’d starred in a porn movie twenty years earlier.
2
“Mistah Lewis?”
Apgard opened his eyes, threw up his arm to shield them from the white glare of the sun. He started to sit up, but fell back with a groan. Apparently he’d passed out the night before, because when he looked around he found himself lying on the chaise, on the patio. Johnny Rankin was standing over him holding a tray with, God bless him, a Bloody Mary Ann (white rum and tomato juice) and an open bottle of aspirin.
“T’ought ya might be needin’ de hair of de hound, sah,” Johnny told him, then added that Dr. Vogler was waiting for him in the drawing room.
Lewis shook a handful of aspirin out onto his palm, popped them, washed them down. His body felt the rum first and shivered with gratitude. “What time is it?”
Johnny set the tray down on the patio table, consulted his watch. “Half past noon.”
The last thing Lewis remembered was getting felt up by Emily Epp. He glanced under the towel and was relieved to find he still had his shorts on. An alcoholic blackout is a frightening thing-the night before looms behind you like a great black pit. “When you got here this morning, was I…Was anyone else here?”
Johnny shook his head. “It do look like ya had some comp’ny, sah.” His characteristically solemn expression was, as always, unreadable. “I took de liberty of tidyin’ up. Ya wan’ me get rid of de doctah?”
“No-give him some coffee or something, tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes. And Johnny?”
“Sah?”
“Don’t say anything to…Oh.” For just an instant there, just a moment of inattention, it had slipped his mind that Hokey was dead. Weird sensation, like starting to introduce yourself and forgetting your own name.
Johnny realized what had happened. He told Lewis not to fret himself, that the wound was still mighty fresh.
Later, in Lewis’s study, Vogler too tried to reassure Lewis about his momentary lapse. “The mind tries to protect itself-it’s a temporary state of dissociation. I’m more concerned with your alcoholic intake.”
“It won’t happen again. It was just-the sense of guilt overwhelmed me.”
“What you have to understand, Lewis, is that what you’re feeling is survivor’s guilt. It’s part of the grieving process-but not the healthy part. So when you start feeling that way, you need to remind yourself that you didn’t kill your wife, you didn’t contribute to her death in any way, shape, or form, and there was nothing you could have done to prevent it.
“Now unfortunately, since you kept me waiting for half an hour, our time is up for today. I’ll write you a prescription for Valium, in case you start feeling overwhelmed again, but you’ll have to promise to lay off the booze-the two don’t mix. And you do understand I’ll have to charge you for the full hour.”
“You mean the full fifty minutes.” But Lewis was glad to be rid of the man so soon. He wondered, now that Hokey was dead, whether he still had to stay with the therapy. He’d only agreed to it because Hokey had insisted-it
